| Ealing Save Our NHS is proud to have started our campaigning year by joining with striking nurses earlier last week. Along with ambulances workers they are absolutely determined to continue to fight for pay justice, but also to defend our broken NHS. |
| Patients are being harmed as a direct consequence of underfunding and government policies as staff struggle to deliver the quality of care they strive for every day. Horror stories abound of ambulances queuing hours to drop off patients preventing them from getting to emergencies on time, and 1000’s of people waiting 12 hours or more on trolleys in overcrowded A&Es – all due to lack of beds, social care and staff shortages. |
| According to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, failures in emergency care are causing up to 500 excess deaths a week. How awful it must be for those working on the emergency front line. |
| The Tories have certainly done their best to avoid any responsibility for the crisis. It’s all down to Covid, bad management of funding, flu- anything but them. Even their own supporters don’t believe them as polls show 73% of Conservative voters think they are responsible! |
| NHS staff taking strike action are our beacon of light shining a spotlight for everyone to see on the true state of our NHS and rightly deserve our absolute support. |
| PLEASE JOIN US ON 28TH JANUARY |
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28TH JANUARY – DAY OF ACTION IN SUPPORT OF NHS WORKERS – JOIN US IN EALING
| SOS NHS and Keep Our NHS Public have called a National Day of Action in support of NHS staff and demanding that the Government take emergency action to save lives now! |
| Ealing Save Our NHS will be supporting the action with a Street Stall outside Marks & Spencers in Ealing Broadway from 11.30 – 1.00pm. |
| We have leaflets, ‘I Stand with NHS Staff’ window posters and badges and will be encouraging people to write a short message of support on post it notes, which we will share on social media and with NHS Staff on picket lines – Should be fun! |
| If you can join us we will be very pleased to see you. |
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1000 LOCAL PEOPLE OPPOSE CLOSURE OF EALINGS MENTAL HEALTH BEDS!
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| Ealing Save Our NHS has shone a spotlight on West London NHS Trust plans to permanently close the Hope and Horizon Wards at St Bernard’s Hospital cutting 31 much needed mental health beds and leaving Ealing with NO BEDS for seriously mentally ill residents of working age. |
| Ealing residents are the main user of beds in all three Boroughs covered by the Trust ( Ealing, Hounslow & Hammersmith) and despite some replacement of beds in Hounslow there is an overall loss of 14 beds despite a growing Mental Health crisis! |
| We recently presented our 1000 strong Petition ( picture above), which calls for these vital beds and those for children and young people to be re-opened, to both West London Trust, who are responsible for mental health services and Ealing Council, who are responsible for scrutinising theses services. |
| As part of the current ‘engagement process’ being carried out by the Trust we also submitted a detailed critique of the plan, which has been widely read and is available on our website. |
| Ealing Council has responded, by saying they are also concerned at the loss of acute mental health facilities. We know from talking to people on the streets how much local feeling there is about this issue. In a letter to ESON, Council Leader Peter Mason and Health Lead Joshua Blacker wrote: |
| “It is vitally important that Ealing is adequately served with the acute mental health services our residents require. We have been clear with the Trust that we would not want to see any loss of resources for Ealing residents, and expect the return of acute mental health facilities back into the Borough.” |
| Our campaign has certainly made an impact, contributing to the Trust extending it’s ‘public engagement’ and has got some very favourable coverage in the local media. |
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SOLIDARITY WITH STRIKING NURSES:
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| Ealing Save Our NHS joined other local NHS campaigns last week to show our solidarity with striking nursing staff at University College Hospital. They are mainly young, angry and absolutely determined to fight on until they win but not just for themselves but for the NHS they support every working day. |
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| At 3.00pm we all set off to march to Downing Street in a demonstration organised by Keep Our NHS Public, NHS Workers Say No and NHS Staff Voices. All along the streets, buses and cars hooted their support and many people waved and cheered. Support is as strong as ever despite the best efforts of the media and Government to misrepresent them! |
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SUPPORTING OUR LOCAL AMBULANCE WORKERS:
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| Ambulance workers up and down the country have taken the unprecedented step of taking strike action and are being blamed by Tory Ministers for putting peoples lives at risk. |
| “People’s lives are already being put at risk every day because we don’t have the resources or staff.” |
| ( Antonia Goswell Unison Rep and paramedic) |
| The statistics speak for themselves with average waits now up to an average of 10 Minutes for life threatening calls – instead of the 7 minute Target and average waits of over an hour for suspected strokes and heart attacks- nothing to do with strikers at all. |
| On Monday (23rd January) Unison ambulance workers across London took strike action and ESON supporters joined them at Hanwell Ambulance Station |
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FAT CAT PRIVATE HEALTH BOSSES SET TO MAKE MORE £ OUT OF NHS CRISIS!
| In December the Government announced the creation of an an ‘Elective Recovery Taskforce’ to provide advice on how to “ turbocharge NHS recovery from the pandemic, reduce waiting times for patients and eliminate waits for routine care over a year by 2025 “ Not much of a turbo charge really! |
| The membership of this Taskforce has been kept secret but thanks to ‘Open Democracy’ we now know the launch event was attended by seven CEOs of private health care firms (including the Chief Executives of the UKs two largest private hospital providers, Circle Health Group and Spire Healthcare) some of whom are listed as members of the new Taskforce. |
| It is rather disappointing that Labour’s Shadow Health Secretary Wes Streeting sees the private sector as part of the solution to the NHS crisis and is calling for more use of private hospitals – despite the evidence that billions have been wasted on such schemes, especially during and since the pandemic. |
| “The private sector was bailed out during Covid, has a lucrative four-year £10bn deal ongoing and is also in a position to earn massive profits from patients forced to go privately to avoid NHS queues of 7.2 million.” |
| ( Tony O’Sullivan Co-Chair – Keep Our NHS Public) |
PRIVATISATION – 557 DEATHS TOO MANY – JOIN THE ACTION
| Anti privatisation campaign ‘We Own It’ are planning their biggest action ever against NHS privatisation on Saturday 25 February (from 2-4pm at Parliament Square) |
| The goal is to bring together 557 people at Parliament Square, the number of people whose deaths have been linked to privatisation, according to a recent Oxford University study. And really highlight what privatisation of the NHS really means. |
- Each person will represent one of the people whose deaths were linked to privatisation.
- Each person will deliver a personal message to the Secretary of State for Health, Steve Barclay on a card at the end of a short solemn march;
- And each person will be holding a white rose to signify the human cost of NHS privatisation and send a strong message.
| If you would like to join in the action please click here |
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