Supporters of nurses’ strike and NHS shout slogans at a picket line outside St Mary’s Hospital in west London. AFP file photo
Liverpool: As National Health Service (NHS) crisis gets worse with every passing day, heart-wrenching cases are coming to the fore where emergency patients are forced to lie unattended without treatment.
In the latest, a 92-year-old ailing woman pleaded her family to let her die after she was made to wait for medical assistance for over 33 hours in a Liverpool hospital, has emerged from England amid a National Health Service (NHS) crisis.
The crisis, which has been exasperated by a surge in flu and Covid cases, has prompted authorities to reinstate pandemic-era mask and WFH provisions to avoid a total shutdown of the health service.
Moreover, according to a report by Daily Mail, trust bosses have started to consider treating patients in field hospitals or tents.
What happened to the 92-year-old woman?
On New Year’s Eve, after Graeme Smith’s grandmother started to feel unwell the family called for an ambulance. However, the vehicle arrived “hours later”, making Smith’s grandmother condition worse.
She was finally taken to Aintree University Hospital in Liverpool at 9 pm where she was left at the corridor until around 6 am on 2 January following which she was eventually moved to a ward.
Smith, describing his ordeal to Liverpool Echo, said that his grandmother was among “40 other elderly or sick people” waiting on the hospital corridor.
“They were all being treated as well as staff could manage, but a number of them were in distress. It was horrendous to be honest,” he said.
He added, “She was very distressed after a while, she was crying and telling us she wanted to die. She was praying and asking to be taken. I’ve never heard her say anything like that before.”
Smith, however, acknowledged the efforts of health workers. “The staff were trying their best, they were so apologetic,” he said.
Rishi Sunak on NHS crisis
In his New Year’s speech, Britain’s Prime Minister Rishi Sunak admitted that the NHS waiting times are too long. He urged hospitals not to cancel surgeries amid severe pressures on Accident and Emergency departments.
Referring to the Covid pandemic when NHS drastically reduced conducting surgeries, Sunak urged health workers not to repeat doing so.
“The amount of elective activity in the NHS was down to about half of what it normally does. So the reason we’ve got a huge waiting list now is because we’re having to catch up with that,” he said.
“I know there are challenges in A&E. People are understandably anxious when they see ambulances queueing outside hospitals,” he added.
500 people dying per week due to emergency care delay
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.
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