Operations delayed until 2021 while hospital staff are left standing idle
sir – Last Tuesday, I spent four hours driving for a face-to-face consultation with an oral surgeon, only to be told that the unit would not be operational for surgery until 2021.
The hospital was empty, with staff in scrubs standing about doing nothing.
The consultation lasted all of 10 minutes, of which 20 seconds involved a physical examination. The rest of the time, the surgeon was apologising for the unit effectively being shut down.
What is happening with the NHS?
David Burrows
Barton-on-sea, Hampshire
sir – Four weeks ago I had an MRI scan but I have had no results.
I have made repeated phone calls to the hospital to no avail. I have met with answerphones, secretaries who have told me that I’ll be rung back, and the information that my specialist is on holiday.
I have lost all faith in the NHS.
Rodney Barnes
St Ives, Huntingdonshire sir – Professor Stephen Powis, the national medical director of NHS England, is deluding himself that the NHS is back in action (Letters, September 5).
Are cancer patients, or those waiting for hip replacements, who write letters about delays, and the patients across the country complaining about half-closed GP surgeries, making it up?
Councillor Alan Law
Streatley, Berkshire
sir – Like Don Cowie (Letters, September 2), a relation of mine is in great pain with carpal tunnel syndrome. He was told no injections were available, but that he could have an operation – some time.
Doris Grimsley
London SE2
sir – I was born just before the NHS came into existence, so for most of my life it has been a comfort to know it has been there should I become ill.
That comfort has now turned to fear – fear that illnesses that tend to come with age will not be treated. Where is the moral duty, which surely should guide the NHS in all it does, to provide the services that are now desperately needed? Who is in charge to justify those services being withdrawn?
The silence from politicians, and in particular from the Prime Minister, is deafening.
Carole Taylor
Lymington, Hampshire
sir – Liz Butler (Letters, September 4) is mistaken in blaming Covid for the “doctor on the phone” policy. I found it being adopted at least two years ago.
In anticipation of its success, most of the chairs were removed from the waiting room in my surgery.
Francis R Carpenter
Cambridge
sir – It would appear that the current motto of the NHS is: “If it is not the virus, we are not interested.” How lamentable.
Michael Brotherton
Chippenham, Wiltshire