Ulster Unionist Health Spokesperson, Roy Beggs MLA, has said that the rapidly deteriorating situation in the local health service would simply not be tolerated anywhere else in the UK.
Roy Beggs said:
“Earlier this year doctors in England wrote to the Prime Minister warning that patients there were ‘dying prematurely’ amid ‘intolerable’ delays and that safety risks existed across their emergency units. Yet in England in September, almost 83% of patients were seen within 4 hours. The same figure for the same month in Northern Ireland was just 66%. I dread to think what those same doctors would have to say about the current state of play in Northern Ireland.
“We are in an unprecedented and deeply precarious situation. Never before in the 70-year history of the local health service have things been so bad.
“Nearly every routine publication of waiting time statistics sets a new record for being the worst in history. There are only so many times we can express concern and deepening horror at the deteriorating problems across our health service, but the biggest problem is that absolutely nothing is being done to address them.
“The same problems from 2 or 3 years ago - not having enough beds, not having enough staff and not having enough community care packages - are all still present today but just now on an even larger scale.
“Whilst our health service is constantly experiencing fresh challenges it is not good enough that it is still restricted to only following previous Ministerial decisions from almost two years ago. It is further reason why the Secretary of State should move to return the Department of Health and its responsibilities back to Westminster on humanitarian grounds.
“The tragic reality is that in 2018, despite all our advances in medical care, more and more patients in Northern Ireland are coming to harm as a result of avoidable delays in receiving treatment.
“It appears that in the absence of a Minister and the Assembly Health Committee, the leadership in the Health Department locally is simply carrying on like business as usual. If this were England, heads would have rolled and remedial measures would have been taken long, long ago.”
