Former GP says award-winning Glasgow hospital could tackle Long Covid

A FORMER GP has called for full funding to be restored to an awardwinning hospital that provides holistic care, to tackle an anticipated surge in Long Covid.

Dr Patrick Trust said an “unhelpful” association with homeopathy had led to the majority of Scottish health boards pulling funding from Glasgow’s Centre for Integrative Care (CIC), which is the UK’S only purpose-built service for person-centred holistic healthcare.

While he is not an advocate of the controversial plant-based treatments, he said the CIC had much to offers patients with chronic illness, who are placing huge demands on the health service.

The hospital was founded in 1880 and moved into its current £2.78million facility on the Gartnavel campus after a fundraising campaign bolstered by legacy donations.

At one point, the hospital had 15 beds and was taking around 200 referrals a month for therapies including acupuncture, counselling and physiotherapy but services have gradually been reduced due to funding cuts, mainly by NHS

Greater Glasgow and Clyde.

“We have a group of people who are poorly looked after,” said Dr Trust, who worked as a GP in the Vale of Leven area.

“A lot of colleagues see these people as troublesome. They have quite complicated needs, they have been through the system and the system hasn’t helped them. We give them painkillers but that is not the solution.

“People who have seemingly insoluble problems are very demanding of the health service. I had two particular patients who used the call the out-of-hours service more than anyone else in the area.

“One had been to four Glasgow hospitals and nobody had helped them.

“I would speak to Dr David Reilly, who was at the CIC then.

“It took a year or two of those patients attending and one of them went in for a while and the difference was dramatic. They are not cured, they still get pain sometimes but it’s now managed with much fewer drugs and no admissions to hospital.

“In addition to that they have stopped calling out-of-hours help. People don’t count that sort of thing, it’s not measured in the health service.”

Dr Trust, who lives in Cardross, said the demands placed by chronic illness on the NHS will be compounded by Long Covid.

A recent study led by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) at Leicester Biomedical Research Centre, found there was a need for wide-access to post-covid rehabilitation services.

“There has been a problem with cancer during the pandemic and GPS will be thinking, we can’t miss this and someone with a long-term chronic problem is not going to get the attention they deserve,” he said. “We need somewhere like the CIC, which GPS can use.”