Is the response to the NHS crisis good enough?

I CAN’T think of a more patronising response by Theresa May when she responded to the NHS crisis by saying it was difficult, frustrating and disappointing. The words I would use are disgraceful, appalling and shambolic. How is Jeremy Hunt still Health Secretary after his handling of the junior doctors’ strike, IT problems and now the cancellation of non-emergency operations for the whole of January?

GORDON KENNEDY, Perth. ThE health secretary apologises for delays to planned operations and the Prime Minister says the Nhs is better prepared ‘than ever before’. how do you untie this political claptrap?

BRIAN BEST, High Wycombe, Bucks. EXPERTS have blamed financial cuts, uncontrolled migration, an ageing population and bed-blocking due to a lack of care home places for the crisis in hospital bed availability. However, the root cause lies in the expansion in day surgery and keyhole surgery, which persuaded the powersthat-be that fewer hospital beds were needed. As a once-proud employee of the NHS and a retired consultant anaesthetist, I have to point out the obvious consequence of such an action. KEVIN MOORE, Doncaster, S. Yorks. ThE Nhs crisis is down to the changes brought in by Tony Blair: nurses on degree courses in a classroom instead of training on wards; PFi deals weighing down hospitals with interest charges and tying them into high-priced service contracts; and changing GP contracts so they no longer provide an out-of-hours service, meaning people go to A&E instead. Add the changes in social care and the increase in immigration, and i am not surprised at the state we are in.

SUE McCLUNG, Gloucester. THREE things guaranteed in life: death, taxes and a winter crisis for the NHS. DAVID HAYES, Sandwich, Kent. Nhs in a mess? Nothing to do with eight million missed appointments, health tourism or drunks blocking A&E. J. WALMSLEY, Bury, Gtr Manchester. THE so-called crisis in the NHS happened every winter when I was nursing. Operating theatres would shut because beds were needed for flu sufferers. If today’s staff were still nurses instead of ‘operating department practitioners’, they could be redeployed on the wards and A&E where they are needed. G. McKIE, Warrington, Cheshire.