Incapable of curing the ills of a broken NHS

ATEENAGE relative faces a major cancer operation in the next few days and for all the brilliance and compassion the NHS can show, the way the news was broken was abysmal.

Her mother had been forced to drive her 50 miles to hospital with what appeared to be appendicitis. It was more sinister, but no one told the patient or her relatives.

At what seemed a routine follow-up, a consultant – the high-handed sort keen to get on the tee and who talks of ‘herd immunity’ as though they were James Herriot – read the notes and casually dropped in: ‘Now, the cancer…’

Even the best-run organisations have some duffers and the NHS has more than its fair share of selfless heroes.

But we cannot let the warm glow we get from having a free-at-point-ofservice NHS blind us to the fact there are big, systemic, problems.

As it happens, other relatives in the south-west of Scotland have had NHS trouble this year, too. One was carted 75 miles to Dumfries because Stranraer’s Galloway Community Hospital lacks an anaesthetist, despite £1.5million blown in a year on locums.

Another found his consultant had retired and his case had gone into the ether, unreviewed for a year. A year!

Health Secretary Shona Robison has finally deigned to visit Wigtownshire after patient protests, though I suspect officials had to be dispatched to find it on the map.

I do hope Miss Robison makes the journey the length of Dumfries and Galloway by service bus, as many patients are forced to do. The road is the grandly titled A75 EuroRoute. Clotted with lorries and drivers haring for ferries, locals know it as ‘the killer A75’.

It is an act of faith for politicians that more money must be spent every year on the NHS. Anyone who suggests otherwise is a hard-hearted swine who cares not for angels mopping fevered brows…

My hat goes off to staff who strain every sinew to help patients in the most trying of conditions.

But the problems of the South-West are replicated across much of rural Scotland. GP appointments are like gold dust and trips to visit in-patients are epic treks.

The SNP is a party of the urban Central Belt. It’s simpler to legislate for big towns with good infrastructure than it is for scattered communities.

BUT we elect politicians to tackle big problems and if they’re not up to the task, they should step aside. Money alone is not the answer, nor are politicians who walk on the crutch of spending.

Miss Robison is one such inadequate, constantly talking about how much good money she is throwing after bad.

Forever consulting and promising to ‘bring forward plans’ to tackle this or that crisis, she appears incapable of effecting positive change for patients.

She promised to end bed-blocking – it persists. Her NHS is a byword for inefficiency when every penny should be precious.

Miss Robison is a prisoner of a tickbox and target culture where statistics abound, while A&E departments are like MASH units and specialists in every area, from radiology to mental health, are stretched too thin.

Nicola Sturgeon should put Miss Robison out of our misery, but she is blinded by false security that things are worse in England and Wales.

Enjoy the South-West, Miss Robison. It really is lovely – if you don’t fall ill.