The mainstream news has covered the case of the 81-year-old Essex pensioner who died after waiting almost four hours for an ambulance.
Far less national attention has been drawn to the fact that at least three patients died this week while waiting for an ambulance or for treatment in a bitter toll of the under-resourcing of the NHS by the Tory government. Others who died include:
- a Portsmouth woman died after seven-hour wait for a hospital bed – five hours in an ambulance outside Accident & Emergency (A&E)
- a Lancashire man died of a heart attack after waiting ninety minutes
A Dudley man also died just before Christmas in a waiting room as he waited for treatment.
Comment:
How high does the death toll have to climb? Tens of thousands will be waiting in pain, discomfort and fear after the Tories cancelled scheduled treatments for the whole month of January – how much more misery has to be inflicted on to patients waiting huge lengths of time for ambulances or urgent treatment before Jeremy Hunt takes responsibility for his abject failure toward the UK’s people and resigns?
This catastrophe was avoidable. Hunt had a year to plan for this winter – a winter in which demand has been lower than last year – only to stumble into an even worse collapse that is already costing lives.
The resignation of a shameless Health Secretary would not be sufficient anyway. Governments should fall.
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