25th September 2011

CHILDREN’S WARD SHOCKER !!

Informed sources have told the SDC that the Health Board plan to downgrade the children’s ward at St John’s! This is part of the plan to pour almost one BILLION pounds into the new Sick Kids hospital which the Board want to build right beside the Royal Infirmary at Little France. The reason is simple. The Board needs hard cash to pay the anticipated cost of £30 million every year for 30 years to the company which will build the new hospital. This money can only come from savings and one of the obvious targets is the existing children’s ward at St John’s.

The Board plans to tell the public and the politicians that the ward at St John’s is becoming unsafe as there are not enough senior doctors to provide cover. This is a smokescreen to hide the real truth. The Board want to build yet another multimillion pound hospital for Edinburgh people and then use the resource from West Lothian to help pay for it!

The Public Accounts Committee in Westminster has now published its conclusions after investigating PFI. And guess what? Yes, as we’ve been saying for years, it’s about as sound a financial model for financing public projects as Gordon Brown’s or Alistair Darling’s memoirs were for funding their retirement pensions!

This disgraceful plan must be stopped. Our children have always received excellent care at St John’s, and very few need to go to Edinburgh. The SDC thinks that West Lothian people will be harmed if the Health Board is allowed to pursue its current plan to build the new Sick Kids at Little France. In fact, it is better for us to rely on the new mega-hospital being built at the Southern general in Glasgow. This is much easier for us to get to, IF our children have to be transferred. Moreover, people in Glasgow do not see us as second class citizens, unlike some folk in Edinburgh.

The SDC opposes the proposed new Sick Kids in Edinburgh. This will harm our children and our community. Moreover, the Health Board will be forced to sell even more assets to pay for it. They have already disposed of over £100 million of assets which we, the people, used to own. Now the “For Sale” notice has appeared outside the Deaconess Hospital (the old Board HQ) because they want to flog yet another building. What happened to the SNP pledge not to allow individual Boards to profit from asset sales? To sell yet another hospital in the middle of the recession speaks volumes for the Board’s desperation. They will sell anything they can because their policies over the years have left them almost bankrupt. The Board’s financial incompetence is breathtaking. They cleared out offices at the Royal Infirmary and the Deaconess Hospital. Now there is empty space at the Infirmary for which they are paying rent to Consort. The Board also has to pay for office space in various parts of Edinburgh to house staff evicted from the Infirmary. Madness!

The Board blames the government for their lack of money. This is just not true! For years, they only managed to balance their books by selling off prime property in Edinburgh. The SNP government has allegedly put a limit on this and so, in order to balance its books, the Health Board now has to shed 2000 people, almost 10% of its staff! These cuts are being applied in a totally random fashion. Did you know that almost half the district nurse posts in West Lothian serving some of the most vulnerable people in the community have simply disappeared? Things are also bad at St John’s. The wards are constantly short of staff and patients are always being moved around the hospital. Even basic equipment is in short supply. In order to try and make St John’s fit for purpose the Board was forced to condemn ancient, worn and dirty equipment. They then failed to replace it, forcing hard-pressed nurses to beg and borrow equipment from other wards. The next time you are in St John’s ASK a nurse, but don’t be surprised if she refuses to answer. The Board is so desperate to get rid of staff that they are using disciplinary procedures to sack people.

St John’s has been cut to the bone and now the Board want to amputate entire limbs. They refuse to provide vital equipment like an MRI scanner (Edinburgh has three) and there are far fewer doctors and nurses at St John’s compared to the town. The strategy is simple. Downgrade St John’s by centralising equipment and personnel in Edinburgh. Then tell the West Lothian public that in order to “get the best care” they have to go to Edinburgh! Why do we put up with this? People in Edinburgh wouldn’t.

The grand plan is to whittle away at St John’s till all that is left is a gigantic geriatrics department and lots of outpatient clinics. The short-stay surgical unit “short changes” West Lothian. It does good work but it is not a patch on the fully-fledged emergency surgical department that we used to have. The Board pontificates about “safety” and “best practice” but the reality is that the Royal Infirmary is distant, expensive, dirty and insecure. The first time the safety inspectors were scheduled to make an “unannounced” visit they told the Royal Infirmary beforehand! Their last visit in August was a disaster. The Infirmary was slated. You haven’t been told about it because it was hushed up and the August monitoring figures pulled from Board papers.

Security at the Infirmary? This is a joke too. Confidential patient details are left lying around so that total strangers can wander in and help themselves. No, we are not making this up. It was all in the Evening News! God forbid we allow our kids to go there and have the local criminals helping themselves to information.

The SDC is pledged to help defend the health service in West Lothian against a Health Board which has failed us time and time again. If we lose the children’s ward at St John’s then it will cease to be a hospital worthy of the name.

We hope that you will help us to defend what is ours by right. Join us at the Glenavon Suite at the Kaim Park Hotel on Thursday 20 th. October at 7.00.

THANK YOU FOR YOUR CONTINUED SUPPORT-WE CAN’T DO IT WITHOUT YOU! IF YOU WOULD LIKE TO TAKE A MORE ACTIVE ROLE IN SUPPORTING THE CAMPAIGN DEDICATED TO PROTECTING ST. JOHN’S HOSPITAL AT HOWDEN PLEASE GET IN TOUCH.

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The SDC Team.

St. John's, the heartbeat of West Lothian