I’m French and owe my life to Britain’s NHS
Quit this loveless marriage
Your report last week about the NHS being blamed as a third of Britons are dying needlessly does not reflect my own experience of the health service – particularly as you also ran a story about a man who claims that if he had been in Britain rather than France, he would have been killed by the cancer that French doctors saved him from twice.
I am a French citizen with a British passport. In September last year I was in Vietnam and developed a pain in my mouth. I travelled back to England and went to see a dentist, who sent me immediately to hospital.
After five days of scans and blood tests, I was told I had jaw cancer.
In October I had a 12-hour operation and the following day I had an eight-hour one to treat a blood clot. Now, after eight months, I have finished with all the radiotherapy and blood transfusions and I am well.
So, thank you to the NHS – the consultants, the nurses, the lot!
It was a different experience to what I had in 2010 in France, when I had to wait 14 hours for a cast for my broken leg in a hospital in Metz.
Romain Wagner, Hampton, Middlesex I have no complaints about our NHS. I had a colonoscopy last week. After an initial investigation found I had four polyps, I was dealt Perhaps we should think of our EU membership as a bit like that of a woman who has endured 40 years in a loveless marriage. Worse is to come: she is now faced with her partner’s failing health brought on by years of reckless self-indulgence. She has even heard it whispered that his condition is probably terminal. But she is a confident and attractive woman and not without courage, so she has decided to break for freedom, with in a very reasonable timescale. Also, I am reading more and more stories that EU countries will not accept the European Health Insurance Card that gives us access to state healthcare in other member nations – they want your travel insurance details or your credit card instead. Thankfully, the NHS asks for neither.
William Houghton, Bath So an EU report shows our health system as being among the worst in the developed world – criticised for not being patientfocused and having tens of thousands dying needlessly get a divorce and rejoin the big wide world. Ian Maiden, Beaulieu, Hampshire Now that the consequences of Britain’s military intervention in Iraq are obvious to all and sundry, are we morally justified in pulling out of the EU and letting our European partners deal with the refugee problem?
M. Yome, Gibraltar through late diagnosis and delayed treatment. Why are we surprised by this, when the NHS is based entirely on a system of rationing through waiting lists? Roy Daniels, Luton, Bedfordshire If we gave the NHS a breather by stopping mass immigration and tried to halt the flood of fatties clogging up the surgeries with diabetes, heart problems and strokes, it might stand a chance of recovery.
Philip Parkin, London