NHS crisis was predictable
Back in June 2015, your paper reported that the people of East Kilbride were hit with the sudden news that our out-of-hours GP service situated at Hairmyres Hospital would close and those requiring a GP in the evenings or weekends would either have to travel to Hamilton or to Wishaw.
There was fury at this decision as many felt that a town the size of East Kilbride needed an out-of-hours service and that the closure would only put more pressure on Hairmyres, who were already experiencing a ‘dip in performance’.
A petition calling for a U-turn on the decision attracted almost 20,000 signatures, which both Linda Fabiani MSP and Dr Lisa Cameron MP declined to sign.
At first we were told by Ms Fabiani, through your paper, that this was just an “interim measure” and the service was being axed for safety reasons as there was no locum.
Ms Fabiani also told your paper that she had raised concerns about the closure with Shona Robison, the SNP health minister at Holyrood; however, this was not strictly true.
Ms Fabiani did raise concerns at Holyrood the previous month, on May 6, but this was only in regards to NHS Lanarkshire considering the closure, not about the closure itself, and later she failed completely to mention it in the parliamentary health debate on May 10.
Later, again through your paper, we were informed by both Ms Fabiani and Dr Cameron that a national review on GP out-of-hours services was taking place throughout Scotland and the results of this review would be published at the end of November 2015.
Since then we have heard nothing from these two politicians about these results or if our GP out-of-hours service was to be reinstated.
So far this has not been a particularly bad winter. We’ve had a cold snap and a flu epidemic which is not unusual for Scotland and in previous years our NHS, although under pressure, has coped.
However, this year many of us have been aware of many side roads having not been gritted and grit bins being empty.
In fact, the street I live in and streets surrounding were not gritted once during the icy weather and our grit bins are empty.
Contrary to some of the comments published in last week’s News about A&E being full of people abusing it, it is cuts to our health services, streets not being gritted and no local GP out-ofhours service, that was predictable in 2015, that Hairmyres would not be able to cope under such pressure and ambulances were waiting eight deep outside A&E and office staff being asked to help clean the place.
I for one am sick of hearing Nicola Sturgeon telling us how well the Scottish NHS is doing and how much the SNP are pouring into it when we are all aware of the cuts to it and how it’s doing better than its English counterparts.
Yes, it’s true that NHS England is performing direly; however, the NHS in Scotland has been cut to the bone by the Scottish Government and is only performing slightly better than dire.
We have amazing staff in the NHS, who are being ‘taken a loan of ’ by the Scottish Government and I’ve no doubt if by chance they should respond to this letter, they’d only blame Westminster.
I’m calling on our local politicians to step up to the plate, listen to your constituents and get our local GP outof-hours service reinstated.