Bevan

Bevan was a Labour politician who oversaw the introduction of the NHS in 1948. On February 9th 1948 Bevan told Parliament “take pride in the fact that, despite our financial and economic anxieties, we are still able to do the most civilised thing in the world: put the welfare of the sick in front of every other consideration”. This still rings true today. Perhaps even more so when the fabric of the NHS is under threat by the coalition Health Bill we see before us now.
To highlight the major concerns doctors and patients have over these changes a colleague of mine from BMA UK Council, Dr Clive Peedell, is running from the Bevan statue in Cardiff to the Department of Health in Whitehall, London - a distance of 160 miles in 6 days - in January 2012. 
On Friday 13th January the run will pass through Witney in Oxfordshire - David Cameron's constituency. I will be speaking at 11am along with Dr Peedell and Dr Ian Banks, President of the European Mens Health Forum. We will highlight the major concerns doctors have over where the NHS is heading under the Health Bill. We will then deliver a postcard to the Prime Ministers constituency office which details all the concerns we have - click here for the full details of this.
You can find more details of the run and information on the Bill itself here
http://bevansrun.blogspot.com/ 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A Porsche or a Ventilator?

We've seen the government announce they want to borrow money from City hedge funds to prop up the NHS finances. In effect this means taxpayers will be funding a hedge fund dealers new Porsche rather than buying a neonatal ventilator. Tax payers will be fleeced and huge interest payments on this deal will go to the hedge fund meaning less funds are available to the NHS for direct patient care. I've written an article in the BMJ on this and you can read it here... http://blogs.bmj.com/bmj/2017/04/13/david-wrigley-financing-the-nhs-through-hedge-funds/ Do leave a message on the BMJ website on how you feel about this.  David 
Read more

The serious implications of the case of Dr Bawa-Garba

A shockwave swept through the medical profession this week. The erasure from the medical register of Dr Bawa-Garba left many doctors thinking 'that could be me.....'. Dr Bawa-Garba was a junior doctor working in a busy paediatric department in Leicester in 2011. She was just back from a years maternity leave and thrown straight back into acute paediatric care with doctors missing on the rota, faulty hospital equipment and far too much work/too many patients to remain a safe doctor. Tragically, on that day a child died due to multiple failures and indeed the hospital itself admitted it had many areas it needed to improve on to prevent such an incident occurring again. Dr Bawa-Garba was subsequently convicted of manslaughter in a court of law and given a 2 year suspended sentence. It is said the court did not take into account the serious pressures Dr Bawa-Garba faced that day. Some time later she subsequently went through a process at the Medical Practitioners Tribunal ...
Read more

General practice is on a cliff edge - and ACOs could tip it over

The latest acronym to hit the NHS is ACO – Accountable Care Organisations. You would be forgiven for sighing with disbelief at yet another change to the way the NHS operates. It wasn’t enough for the Conservative led coalition to push through the single biggest reorganisation of the NHS with the Health and Social Care Act 2012 – a change so big you could ‘ see it from space’ according to the then NHS chief executive David Nicholson. ACOs are the latest reorganisation by NHS England which Simon Stevens expects to “deliver fast-track improvements, such as fewer emergency hospitalisations and better care in people’s homes”. On the face of it that sounds like a good plan but the potential seismic shift in how the NHS runs under an ACO is frightening. ACOs will seek to bring together all organisations (providers and commissioners) offering health and social care under ‘one roof’ in a geographical area. Social care is now based on means testing so you have to pay if you have some ...
Read more