Did NHS cuts condemn a disabled boy to agony after botched bed allocation?
Louise Ellis, with son Jack.
Once upon a time – by which I mean any time during the first 30 years or so of the existence of the NHS – the required equipment would have been available at any hospital where it was needed.
Admittedly, medicine has advanced hugely in the intervening years, but this was considered to be a national service – with every patient accommodated to the best of its ability.
Now: Postcode lottery, it seems.
Why?
Is it because the amount of money available to the NHS has fallen, in real terms?
Is it because the funds have gone to private companies?
Why is this equipment not available where it is needed?
The NHS Trust involved in this story would not be apologising, and the child concerned would not be forced to suffer continuing pain, if the specialist bed had been available.
The fault lies with whoever decided it didn’t have to be.
I’m willing to bet that person was an accountant, acting on the orders of a right-wing politician.
A disabled boy has been forced to ‘live in pain’ after his operation was canceled because Bristol Children’s Hospital had the ‘wrong bed’.
Mum Louise Ellis, from Gloucester, says her 10-year-old son Jack now has to take daily doses of morphine to reduce his agonising pain while he waits for his procedure to be rescheudled.
Jack was sent home because the hospital did not have a special cot-styled bed required to keep him safe while he slept
Now the brave school pupil, who suffers from cerebral palsy and is wheelchair dependent, is at home in agony suffering from a roaming testicle and a dislocated hip – which both require surgery.
Jack had the cot-style bed, which he sleeps in at home, when he was first admitted to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital on Sunday.
It effectively allows his parents to lock him in so he is safe because although he needs a wheelchair, he is not paralysed and very curious about his environment.
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More to the point: What are they waiting for?
Answer: ‘Till the fuss dies down and they go back to doing nothing about it… But of course, now Mike and others have covered it, things might happen, or might not, but don’t hold your breathe…
PS. I bet they have no such shortages in private healthcare.
Whilst I would abolish the trust system this is possibly more down to the pc brigade who would be concerned over the human rights of a child of this age and to use a cot to lock him in although it made him safe would have their hands up in the ether in horror. Common sense goes out of the window with these professionally horrified types.