The lack of care reform has cost lives

From: Trevor Lyttleton MBE, Southway, London.

YOU rightly highlight successive governments’ unconscionable delays in launching social care reform (The Yorkshire Post, July 25).

Jeremy Hunt claims that “the thing I was most passionate about as Health Secretary was reducing numbers of avoidable deaths”.

This would be more convincing had he taken action six years ago as Health Secretary after calling the neglect of a million pensioners “a source of national shame”.

Had he done so, we would now have fully-funded social care, countless neglected lives could have been saved and there would not have been a “million pensioners left starving through loneliness” before he became Foreign Secretary six years later.

He would also not be complaining about “so many lives unnecessarily lost” during Covid as social care could have provided the most isolated with proper care at home, thus enabling NHS hospitals to transfer safely home many of the 20,000 who died tragically in infected care homes.

From: Dr Brian McGregor, Chair, BMA Yorkshire Regional Council.

NHS services in Yorkshire will be preparing to face what will undoubtedly be one of the toughest winters in the history of our health service.

Come the winter, our NHS will need to tackle a backlog of care, treat Covid patients, deal with seasonal flu and prepare for further local or national outbreaks of coronavirus.

Empowering local councils to close shops, outdoor events and public spaces, while long overdue, is entirely necessary to help reduce the spread of the virus and keep the pressure off the NHS.

It is crucial that this is underpinned with adequate resources, clear local data and a well-managed test, track and trace system. So far, the Government’s record in all these areas has not been good.

What’s more, to help our health services cope with the huge demands that still lie ahead and to avoid a second Covid-19 spike this winter, every one of us must make prevention our priority.

This means carefully adhering to physical distancing rules, washing your hands regularly with soap and water, and wearing face coverings in all situations where it’s not possible to be more than two metres apart.

This includes offices, doctor’s surgeries, as well as shops and on public transport.

From: Johnny O’Neill, Northallerton.

IN all your campaigning work on social care, do you ever get a response from Boris Johnson (The Yorkshire Post, July 25) or can we assume that he does not care?