GP’s furious email to Humza over his mum’s trolley wait

He asks: Was this morally abhorrent?

A GP whose 96-year-old mother was kept on a trolley in a hospital corridor for 40 hours has written to Humza Yousaf demanding to know if he thinks this was ‘morally abhorrent’.

The Health Secretary dodged the chance to condemn the traumatic experience Evelyn Gaw suffered after being taken to A&E.

Paramedics took the former primary school headmistress to hospital last week after she collapsed from pneumonia. But due to a lack of hospital beds at Crosshouse Hospital in Kilmarnock, the great-grandmother was left on a trolley in a packed corridor shivering, terrified and in tears over three days.

Her son, Dr Norrie Gaw, detailed the ‘unacceptable’ situation to Tory health spokesman Dr Sandesh Gulhane, who challenged Mr Yousaf about the shocking saga.

But Mr Yousaf ignored the question about whether he found it ‘morally abhorrent’ – the words used by First Minister Nicola Sturgeon to describe the miniBudget set out last week.

Instead, he rejected the idea that ‘creating more beds in the system is the panacea’. Dr Gaw said Mr Yousaf’s non-answer ‘just shows the policy is to ignore the facts and ignore there is a crisis in the health service’.

Dr Gaw, a GP in central Glasgow, told the Scottish Daily Mail: ‘It’s indicative of the denial from him and the First Minister, and until they recognise that, they are not going to put in place measures that work. The bottom line is that when we needed a hospital bed, there were none. And we know it’s going to get worse.’

The under-fire minister belatedly issued an apology a day after the case was raised by this paper, but he has not spoken to Mrs Gaw or her family. Mr Yousaf said: ‘Excessively long waits are never acceptable and it’s right that the health board have offered an unreserved apology.

‘While it’s clearly welcome that this patient is getting the right care now, I am sorry to hear that her initial experience fell short of what everyone should expect.’

Asked if the First Minister found the case abhorrent, her official spokesman said: ‘If anyone is having to wait that long, that’s unacceptable. Everybody’s aware of the pressure that A&E departments are under.’

Jonathan Brocklebank – Page 22