LAST week the Tory government suspended the Lambeth, Southwark • and Lewisham Area Health Authority for its refusal to spending cuts in line with government policy. 'The authority insists that such этед.
Sociatist Challenge spoke to Janet Maguire, a health worker in one of the hospitals on the firing line — Secretary ASTMS Janet is also secretary of the Campaign against Health Cuts Southwark and Lewisham. How serious are the cuts demanded by the government?
Southwark The Lambeth, Lewisham AHA is one of the largest in the country. It is responsible for three country's biggest hospitals Guys, Kings Thomas's.
These hospitals contain some of country's top surgeons highly fields, such as heart surgery, kidney transplants and neurosurgery. Many of our patients come from all over the country to get treatment they could get nowhere else: in some specialities as many as su per cent or palents comic from outside the area.
These hospitals are also responsible for training a very large number of doctors and nurses who then go to work in hospitals in every part of Britain.
So the hospitals in besides serving the local population, play a central role in health service. The cuts in Lambeth will therefore affect the entire service.
What's more, the only way to save the £8 million demanded government is to cut into some of the most essential services. It would mean, for example, that the authority would have to place an embargo on buying This would directly at the special role of the Lambeth hospitals, for the specialists would no longer be able to keep abicast of LICW developments medical technology.
Socialist Challenge 9 August 1979 impose drastic like 1,500 are at risk.
In practice it closure Guys.
branch, down.
for an orthopaedic operation and artificial hip teaching and St and specialised At the same time, because the health service is so labour-intensive, the only way to make really big cuts to cut the number of beds. Something would mean the of several of the smaller hospitals in the area as well as reducing the number of beds available in the big teaching hospitals. You can get an idea of thescale of the cuts if I say that 1,500 beds would be equivalent to one of the three large teaching hospitals closing The result of cutting beds is that waiting lists will grow ever longer. Patients already have to wait two years - an for example. In outside maternity, a couple of months ago, we were sending mothers home within FIGHT THE DITS IN N.H.
DEFERL two days of their giving birth. Seven days is normal practice.
Of course, the beds won't be scrapped. When beds have been left standing empty for a while, they'li be offered to the private sector, so as not to 'let them go to waste' : So the cuts will result in a transfer of desperately needed resources from the NHS to the private health sector.
Will people die as a result of these cuts? Yes, they will. Take for example heart pacemakers. We have 1,500 patients from all parts of the country fitted with pacemakers.
To make economies, the AHA has discussed the idea that patients living the Lambeth/Lewisham/ Southwark area should no longer be provided with pacemakers. many areas, Kent for example, there are no facilities to fit pacemakers. This means that people could die.
Other proposals going the rounds like cutting back transplants or other patients with kidney failure — would have even worse effects.
And of course growing waiting lists mean people treatment will die before they can get attention, particularly the elderly. Why did the AHA decide to refuse to implement the cuts?
The Labour government AHA to keep their spending within 1977-78 levels, while proper provision for inflation. AHA tried to avoid making cuts, and ran up an overdraft in order to meet its "overspending'.
on kidney treatment needing all kinds of However, firm collaborating asked the to take over.
The How in bodies.
groups.
This trade example of dic being in the area.
in Tower September authority. save obligations. This is what the press call What broke the camel's back was the refusal of the Tories to make allowance for the extra expenditure that will result from this year's wage rises and their jacking up of VAT. In effect, the government is financing its Budget with the lives of NHS patients.
The rebellion was led the Labour councillors on the AHA.
Shot Labour Party members on the AHA are standing Stan Hardy, for example, is the Regional Health Authority who have stepped in Most serious of all is the fact that while Labour was in office the AHA itself drew up extremely detailed plans for cuts, though they were hesitatingto implement them. These plans will now fall into the hands of the government.
are local health workers responding to the news?
People on the wards are furious. Many of them are talking about occupations and work-ins the moment the first cuts are imposed. Support has been coming many labour movement NUPE and COHSE have condemned the government. We also support of local tenant The Campaign Against Cuts in Lambeth, Southwark and Lewisham was set up in late January to organise the fight against the cuts. It has the official backing of the three trades councils in ine area and numciou.
union bodies, both in and beyond the NHS.
We have printed 20,000 leaflets to explain the meaning of the cuts. These distributed the hospitals and major shopping centres We are organising a petition, and a big public meeting for 8 But what we must prepare for are occupations, sit-ins, and a campaign non-cooperation WItn We've got to build up to industrial action by all workers in this area to stop these disastrous cuts.
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cuts can only be made at the cost of jeopardising the lives of people in the