WE CAN’T ABANDON NON-COVID PATIENTS AND PUT THEM AT RISK
Dr renee HoenDerkamp is a Gp in London. She says:
ONE of my patients, who has lung cancer, had an operation scheduled for last week. She is an otherwise very fit and healthy 70-year-old, and reasonably could have been expected to go into full remission. And then, without warning, her operation was cancelled.
Someone, somewhere following a diktat, had taken a red pen to the list and crossed through her name. They had probably not looked at her case, nor considered the benefit of the surgery to a woman who was a mother, a sister, and a wife, with potentially 30 years of life ahead of her, before taking away her hope — possibly her life.
Every month, thousands of cancer patients are having operations cancelled as beds are taken up by Covid-19 victims. The NHS is throwing ‘non-urgent’ and elective surgical procedures, as well as all screening programmes, out of the window in its fight against the new enemy. Yes, it has just agreed a deal with three private cancer clinic networks to treat 5,000 high-priority cases per month. But we will still see countless preventable deaths, and not only from cancer. Covid-19 is taking precedence over everything else. It is an appalling knee-jerk injustice.
Surely it is not right for a healthcare strategy to discard all ethical considerations and bulldoze through decisions which will cost lives in the name of saving them?
Human beings are being treated as collateral damage. Something as treatable as a urinary tract infection can be fatal without antibiotics and a short stay in hospital. The same applies to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease; to stroke patients who won’t get the medication they need in the vital four-hour window; to heart attack patients who risk being sent home too soon. The list of those in danger in this crisis is endless, and it will get worse. Most early-warning tests, such as cancer smears, have been suspended, even though such illnesses can be treated successfully if caught early. I am worried that in six months’ time we will see a tsunami of serious illnesses that should have been diagnosed much earlier.
The grandmother of a close friend arrived at hospital last Tuesday all set to have an operation for her newly diagnosed breast cancer. As she sat there, filled with nerves but excited that she was getting the surgery she needs, staff phoned my friend to tell her the operation was cancelled. No-one came to tell her grandmother in person. She was sent home, lonely and angry, to face alone what may be her last few months.
Doctors are playing God in a way never before seen. A colleague told me: ‘I worry about a backlash from the public when they realise the implications of what our Covid-19 response has done to the health of the nation.’