It’s no country for old women, either
SOMe stories simply make my blood boil. This is one of them. Those responsible should hang their heads in shame. lily Dove is 95 years old. She has lived in the same part of Norfolk all her life and has been attending her local doctor’s surgery for as long as she can remember. She even recalls the days when her gP would make home-visits on a horse and trap.
as you would expect for a woman of her age, Mrs Dove is not in the best of health and suffers from a number of ailments, including failing eyesight.
after an operation for arthritis and a nasty fall on her left hip, she needs a walking frame to get around. She relies on the clinic for regular check- ups for diabetes, cholesterol and heart problems.
But now Mrs Dove has been told that she has been ‘ de-registered’ by the medical practice at Watton and will have to travel several miles to the town of Swaffham if she needs to see a doctor in future.
The explanation is that the surgery has to shed existing patients to cope with an influx of new residents, many of them from eastern europe attracted by jobs in agriculture.
When she complained, she was told no exception could be made in her case because it would be ‘discriminatory’.
Mrs Dove said: ‘I’ve been with the Watton surgery all my life, as were my parents before me. This letter came out of the blue. There was no question of discussing it with you or anything. I am very nervous about going to Swaffham.’
understandably so, since she is naturally worried about falling over again. Her son says she is very ‘annoyed’.
another woman, a friend of Mrs Dove in her 80s, has also been told she must switch to a surgery ten miles away.
annoyed? Mrs Dove has every right to be absolutely l i vid. She ran a farm with her husband for most of her life and paid her taxes on time. Now she’s told that when it comes to healthcare, she has to go to the back of the queue behind immigrants who until recently have contributed precisely nothing to Britain.
MaRy Osborne, the practice manager, blamed a ‘ national crisis’ in gP recruitment. In the usual weasel jargon employed by self-important bureaucrats, she said: ‘This is a matter of patient safety and we have acted out of concern for ongoing patient care and patient safety.’
Oh, for heaven’s sake. Did she stop for a moment to consider quite how absurd this excuse sounds?
How does it enhance ‘patient safety’ to force a 95-year-old great-grandmother with failing eyesight and mobility difficulties to travel miles to a different clinic to see a doctor?
Where is the human dimension, or any hint of compassion? and if the surgery is under pressure, then why take it out on a frail old lady who has been going there all her life?
Surely the sensible solution would be to direct the newcomers to Swaffham, not kick out lifelong patients to make way for them. There is no justification whatsoever for bouncing Mrs Dove or any other existing user of the Watton surgery.
Of course, there’s a bigger picture here. No one can blame eastern europeans for flooding in to east anglia to take farming jobs which locals are unwilling or unable to fill. But the last labour government encouraged mass i mmigration without first making sure that essential public services could cope. all over the country, schools, hospitals and transport systems are buckling under the strain of trying to handle millions of newcomers. Why should people who have lived in Britain all their lives, often like Mrs Dove in the same few square miles, be punished f or t he politicians’ callous incompetence and indifference?
Forget the rhetoric about our ‘world class’ NHS. like the rest of the State sector, it is run entirely for the benefit of those who work in it. Process always takes precedence over people. Mrs Dove is j ust another casualty of a rigid and uncaring regime.
at this point, it is obligatory to acknowledge the sterling work performed every day by many doctors, nurses and ancillary staff in the health service.
But don’t l et’s pretend that everything is hunky dory.
each week we hear more shocking stories of what has gone wrong with the NHS, from the Mid Staffs scandal and the scrapping of out-ofhours doctors’ visits to automated switchboards at gP surgeries, which make it impossible to get an appointment for weeks.
One recent theme of this column has been the shameful treatment of the elderly, from the 83-year- old grandfather persecuted by police for giving his sick wife a pain-killing patch, to the retired trawler skipper prevented from catching a couple of fish in the River Humber.
My conclusion: this is no country for old men.
Now we hear the scandalous story of Mrs Dove’s treatment at the hands of the health service. The NHS seems to regard the elderly as an annoying inconvenience.
an old editor of mine used to say an army should be judged on the way it carries its wounded. Surely a civilised society should be judged on how it treats its elderly and most vulnerable citizens.
In the case of lily Dove, it has failed miserably. It would appear that modern Britain is no country for old women, either.