Let's Save Lives, Not Take Them

John Prescott writes:

This Christmas I experienced a miracle. Not once. But twice. It happened after my younger sister Viv had a heart attack while staying with her daughter and grandkids.

She was rushed to Northampton General Hospital but it looked like the end. Her organs had collapsed, she was put on a ventilator and she didn’t respond.

But the doctors and nurses refused to give up on her. They stuck by her and slowly but surely she responded. She woke, recognized her family and started to come off the machines.

She was deemed well enough to leave intensive care – but she couldn’t. Because as at hospitals across the country there weren’t any free beds.

So I started walking around the hospital. I saw the strain on the faces of staff. Corridors and ­ambulances crammed with sick people on trolleys. Others waiting more than four hours to get treated in A&E.

Then last Monday I was told Viv had had a second heart attack. Yet again I saw doctors and nurses bring her back. Miracle number two.

She’s now been moved down to a normal ward and is walking and talking for the first time since Christmas.

Miracles like this happen every day across the NHS.

Healthcare staff go above and beyond what their bodies and minds can cope with to help people they don’t even know.

Hospitals just about remain open despite soaring demand that they can barely cope with.

At Northampton Hospital, 2,772 patients attended A&E in the 10 days up to Monday, 751 of whom needed emergency admission.

Many are either elderly with several medical problems or people with severe respiratory conditions. My sister has both.

The hospital’s ­management have now asked community children’s doctors to staff the wards and are appealing for other staff from home and abroad, and from expensive agencies to work extra hours to get them through.

What has our NHS become?

How can five years of the coalition ­tinkering with our jewel in the crown have been so damaging?

And the Tory cuts mean councils have cut their care budgets – so more elderly patients have to stay in hospital blocking beds because there aren’t the care packages to help them in the community.

A&E waiting times are now the worst since records began, ambulance response times are longer and GP appointments can take weeks.

The national target for patients being seen at A&E within four hours is 95 per cent. But the current figure is 92.6 per cent.

At Northampton General Hospital it is 91.9 per cent. Last year it fell as low as 86.8 per cent.

All political parties are now ­promising to meet the NHS gap in funds by 2020. But it’s not enough.

Radical change is necessary to integrate both the health and care provision as one National Health and Care Service.

We could increase National Insurance payments and set aside all the extra cash to be spent only on that NHCS.

There’s also a £28billion surplus in the Government's National Insurance Fund. Why can’t we use some of that?

An alternative is to change our spending priorities by diverting the £30billion earmarked for a new nuclear submarine fleet to the NHS.

Let’s save lives, not take them.

Isn’t it time choice was given to the people? Don’t blame the old, the sick or the staff for this A&E crisis.

It’s because government has failed to come up with a long-term funding plan to pay for a 21st century NHS.

Throwing in the odd billion here or there is just putting a sticking plaster on a gaping wound.

This is the most crucial election since 1945.

But Labour must fight like we’ve not fought before to make sure miracles like the one bestowed on my sister Viv can still be carried out for your loved ones.

If that means we have to pay a bit more tax or cancel nuclear ­submarines, it’s a price worth paying.