Ex-health chief criticised for ‘barbaric’ comments
Scotland’s national charity for older people has criticised “barbaric” comments by a former Scottish Government official who suggested a corona virus pandemic“would be quite useful” in clearing delayed discharges levels at hospitals.
Professor June Andrews, a former director of the government’s Centre for Change and Innovation and ex-scottish secretary of the Royal College of Nursing, said that while a pandemic would cause potential damage to businesses such as private care homes, that should not necessarily be viewed as the case in hospital settings.
Addressing Holyrood’s public audit committee, she explained: “Curiously, ripping off the sticking plaster, in a hospital that has 92 delayed discharges, a pandemic would be quite useful because your hospital would work because these people would be taken out of the system.”
Ms Andrews, who is also a former director of nursing at NHS Forth Valley, added that it “sounds like it’s a horrific thing to say,” but stressed that “somehow or other, we’ve put people in the wrong places by not having the kind of strategic views that we should have.”
She told MSPS: “That means that politicians who don’t want to think about bad things before the election, need to think about putting income tax up even higher in order to pay for more care in care homes and they need to think about whether they reinstate geriatric hospitals.”
But Brian Sloan, chief executive of Age Scotland, said her remarks were “barbaric and frankly, abhorrent,” adding: “No one should believe this, let alone say it.”
He said: “The sweeping suggestion that the deaths of vulnerable, older people would be convenient because it would make life easier for hospitals is breathtakingly callous.
“It serves only to exploit the situation the nation faces with coronavirus outbreak and is wholly unwelcome.”
He added: “The more you read and listen to her words, the worse they get. I cannot believe MSPS on the committee didn’t immediately challenge her.
“These people she casts aside are mothers, brothers, grandparents and friends.”