I warned about health problems

JUST a few days ago, many of Wales’ top emergency medicine consultants took the unprecedented step of writing to the First Minister to warn that they couldn’t guarantee patient safety in our A&E departments.

Wales’ top A&E doctors spoke about staff in tears, unable to cope with the demands placed upon them and how Wales’ best-performing hospital was in a worse state that England’s worstperforming one.

The Welsh Government told us that this wouldn’t happen this year. They told us that extra money and early planning would prevent the scenes we saw in previous winters. Sadly, this has not been the case.

A&E staff have reported instances where they arrive for a shift to be greeted by the same patients they treated on a previous shift. Patients are stuck on emergency wards due to a lack of beds.

Weeks after I was elected, I warned the then Health Minister, Mark Drakeford, that the lack of hospital beds was unsustainable. We had lost thousands of beds under successive Labour governments and bed occupancy rates were routinely above 85%. Nearly two years later occupancy rates are regularly around 90%.

This is unsafe and allows no room to manoeuvre when we get increased demand. This winter has seen one of the worst flu seasons in many years. The “Aussie Flu” which caused havoc in the Southern Hemisphere has come to Wales and placed added demands on our NHS.

At Princess of Wales a quarter of A&E patients wait more than four hours for treatment and consultants blame a lack of staff and beds. It’s time to reverse the reduction of beds and the ward closures and past time we reopened our community hospitals.

Unfortunately, that won’t help this winter; all we can do is avoid A&E if we can. See your pharmacist or GP if you get flu and allow our overworked NHS staff to care for the most sick.

I will continue to fight for more staff and more beds so we can avoid the scenes we have witnessed at PoW and hospitals across Wales in recent weeks.