Save our NHS!

Letter in todays Courier.  To say that I feel passionately about the NHS (for personal, biblical and societal reasons) would be to put it mildly!  What is happening in the NHS, especially in Tayside is a disgrace.  Its time for the Scottish government to step in.

Dear Editor,

As someone who has benefited enormously from the NHS and especially Ninewells hospital – not least because they saved my life; and as someone who is waiting for another operation, whose daughter is a nurse in training and many of whose church and friends work in the health service; I would like to express my concern, and that of many others, on the news that NHS Tayside is to cancel all but emergency procedures for a three week period over Christmas.

Whilst I have no doubt that the reason given, to prepare for the usual increase of emergency procedures, is correct, I think it is a little bit disingenuous for the NHS Health Board to give this as the only reason.  The fact is that staff and money shortages are also key factors.   They reckon that the £450 per hour for each theatre could be saved.  Of course staff still have to be paid so it doesn’t really make that much sense.   This suspension is a symptom of the ill health of NHS Tayside. It appears that it is the NHS management and structures which are in need of radical and urgent surgery.    For the sake of the people of Dundee, Angus, Perthshire and NE Fife, can someone please diagnose and operate?

Yours etc