Image used for representational purpose. AFP
London: The United Kingdom could be witnessing as many as 500 deaths per week owing to delays in emergency care, a senior health official has informed.
Dr Adrian Boyle, President of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine told Times Radio on 1 January that a bad flu season that is currently looming in UK is what’s leading to this many “unnecessary deaths.”
“If you look at the graphs, they all are going the wrong way and I think there needs to be a real reset. We need to be in a situation where we cannot just shrug our shoulders and say this winter was terrible, let’s do nothing until next winter,” he said.
Boyle added that there should be alternative ways to ensure that people are not all dependent on ambulance and emergency services.
“We cannot continue like this; it is unsafe and it is undignified,” the doctor said.
“What we’re seeing now in terms of these long waits is being associated with increased mortality, and we think somewhere between 300-500 people are dying as a consequence of delays and problems with urgent and emergency care each week. We need to actually get a grip of this.”
Figures released last week showed that the number of beds occupied by flu patients in London rose by eleven times in a month.
Patient forced to wait for 99 hours
Last week, an accident and emergency (A&E) patient was forced to wait for 99 hours before getting a bed.
The patient, whose name wasn’t disclosed, was brought to the Great Western Hospital in Swindon by an ambulance but was left waiting on a stretcher for four days while the hospital staff desperately looked for beds.
A clinician at the hospital told Sunday Times, “We’re broken and nobody is listening.”
Meanwhile, the hospital’s chief medical officer Jon Westbrook said in a leaked email to staff, “We are seeing case numbers and [sickness] that we have not seen previously in our clinical careers.”
The hospital acknowledged the dearth of hospital beds. A spokesperson for Great Western Hospital in Swindon said, “Great Western Hospitals, like the wider NHS, is currently facing very high demand from patients who need a hospital bed.”
“This does mean that some patients are having to wait a long time to be admitted to a ward. Whilst any patient is waiting for a bed in one of our assessment areas, they continue to receive diagnostic investigations, continuous treatment and supervision from our teams,” the spokesperson added.
The hospital assured that teams are “working tirelessly” with concerned organisations so that medically fit people can be sent home so that more beds can be made available.
“We have also taken a number of additional actions in recent weeks to seek to reduce delays for urgent and emergency patients in recognition of the very challenging position the NHS is facing this winter,” said the spokesperson.
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