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The National Health Service, Britain's Pride And Joy, No Longer Fit For Purpose.

Posted on 13the August 2022

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In this report on The Mirror, a woman describes her dreadful experience at a NHS (National Health Service) A&E (Accident and Emergency) department.

The poor lady waited more than 15 hours for treatment (waiting times of over 17 hours were being predicted by staff at the A&E). In the end, she decided that "may as well have been in pain in bed at home", and went home. Such an occurrence might perhaps be forgiven if it was an isolated case, but it is not.

The whole concept of an emergency department is for dealing with emergencies: situations that require urgent treatment. Clearly, in this case, that department was not able to fulfill their purpose. Hospitals blame staff shortages as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, but that seems a cop-out.

Britain's NHS was once a great source of pride for Britons. That pride no longer seems to have any basis in fact.

Other countries also have increased waiting times in their emergency departments; here in Germany, for example (I know this from personal experience), but the problem is not only with waiting times, as evidenced by a recent message from a friend. He had to cut short a trip to Germany in December last year, and rush home to Britain to his wife, because she had been diagnosed with bladder cancer (because of blood in her urine). It turned out that cancer was a misdiagnosis, but they have spent 8 months and lots of their own money confirming this, because none of the doctors seem to care. She still has blood in her urine, and they still don't know why, so there will be more worry and expense for them over the coming months.

So, long waiting times and poor doctoring: the NHS needs drastic improvement, and a major injection of funds, to fix the problems, which probably won't happen. Anyone who lives in Britain will probably remember the promises by Boris Johnson (Prime Minister at the time) that leaving the EU would allow the UK government to put £350 million per week into the NHS. Clearly the NHS saw none of that money; those promises were nothing more than propaganda.