Tory/Lib Dems Out To Destroy OUR NHS

UNISON nurses protested outside the House of Commons today 31st January 2011 as did nurses at St Georges Hospital Tooting, they were protesting against the Tories/Lib DemsNHS.

Not only do the Tories and Lib Dem's want to hive off large bits of the NHS to the private sector, many local District Hospitals are now under real threat of closure.

As commissioning of health services are left to the whims of General Practitioners.

For example if GPs fall out with consultants at your local hospital and they decide to switch the contract, your local hospital closes.

Any money saved in commissioning can be paid in cash to GP's as a bonus, who are already on £150k a year, so dont have an expensive illness.

GP's don't even need to declare a financial interest in a private health care company, GP decisions do not need to be taken in public, they do not have to involve or ask any patients about their views and are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act.

St Georges Nurses vow to Defend the NHS

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St Georges nurses vow to defend the NHS

Nursing and NHS professionals at St Georges, Tooting, South London started 2011 by taking time out at lunch time to protest at the Governments planned NHS reforms and decision to cut £10bn a year from the NHS through so called efficiency savings.

UNISON Nursing staff at St George's have signalled that they will not hesitate to speak out against Government plans for swinging cuts and privatisation of the NHS.

Michael Walker UNISON Regional Officer states

"UNISON will not sit ideally by and watch our NHS services slashed and privatised. Britain did not vote for the introduction of an American health care system, a system which is not comprehensive, bureaucratic, expensive and where increased competition not collaboration costs patients lives".


Jane Pilgrim UNISON Nursing Convenor at St George's Hospital, Tooting states

"Over one hundred nurses at St Georges Hospital have already signalled they will be joining the TUC rally to defend public services on Saturday 26th March 2011 in Central London and we are receiving incredible support from the local community".

Geoff Thorne UNISON Branch Secretary stated
"Be clear, our branch will take any action necessary to defend our members and the future of the NHS".

Tory NHS Reforms - GP's Forced to Privatise the NHS

Even the Tories now foresee chaos in Lansley's NHS

Polly Toynbee

The Guardian

3rd January 2010

The health secretary's reforms will not bring slow and stealthy change, but a radical explosion. Cameron must sack him

In a startlingly forthright article on Comment is free last week, the new Conservative MP Sarah Wollaston challenged the fundamental principles of the coalition government's National Health Service upheaval. As a GP, she knows the significance of what is happening. Wielding a deft scalpel, she has exposed what has only been a whispered understanding within the government. She put her rubber glove on the precise mechanism by which cosy-sounding GP commissioning leads to fierce commercial competition – and privatisation.

As private companies step in to run commissioning for GPs, she warns that they may "turn to private providers at the expense of NHS providers". Some GPs are eager to run the £80bn NHS budget and become the chief rationers but, she says, "most are not". And there are good legal reasons why not.

The government has sold this as a homely notion whereby your well-respected family doctor will commission the services you need – and who better to make those decisions? It seems to make sense that those who spend the money by referring their patients should control those budgets. But as Dr Wollaston sees so clearly, there is a cancer at the heart of the plan that denies them that right.

For the first time the entire NHS has been put under competition law. The financial and clinical safety of NHS foundation trusts used to be the responsibility of the regulator, Monitor. Now its website proclaims: "The first of Monitor's three core functions is to promote competition." That means "enforcing competition law" and "removing anti-competitive behaviour". Few yet understand the nuclear nature of this. It compels every NHS activity to be privately tendered. If the NHS is the preferred provider, that can be challenged in the courts or referred to the Competition Commission. Red-in-tooth-and-claw commercial competition breaks all partnerships.

Europhobic Tory MPs take note: this makes NHS contracts subject to EU competition law. The NHS was exempt as an essentially state-run service, but GP consortiums will no longer be allowed to use a trusted local hospital without tendering first, for fear that a private company could take them to court. Some global companies will happily run loss-leader services for a while, driving NHS services to close, and no doubt raising their own prices later.

This may not be a slow and stealthy change, but an immediate and radical explosion. As I reported last month, it's happening already. Take the huge new Great Western Commissioning Consortium, amalgamating Hounslow, Hillingdon and Ealing primary care trusts – now considerably more distant from patients. GPs there have hired the US company United Healthcare to run their "referral facilitation service", taking over next month. It will guide and arm-twist, if not quite order, local GPs' referral habits. It will even step in where one hospital consultant directly refers a patient to another specialist and the PCT picks up the bill. Wollaston predicts such commercial commissioners may break old NHS ties and bring in fellow private providers; now we shall watch it happen.

The British Medical Association is alarmed. In tomorrow's British Medical Journal Dr Laurence Buckman, who chairs the BMA's GP committee, says: "I am very disappointed that people are coming to financial arrangements with commercial organisations. If you give someone a toehold, they'll take a foothold. I hope this will not be repeated elsewhere" – but he thinks that it will be.

Dr Clare Gerada, who heads the Royal College of General Practitioners, has already voiced her concern, pointing out that only a quarter of GPs are enthusiastic about a system that supposedly puts them at the helm – hardly surprising if they face lawsuits for staying with trusted NHS hospital partners. Don't assume most doctors have yet got their heads around the full implications; most tend not to bother until something impedes their everyday practice – but then they will kick up a huge fuss.

Stirrings around David Cameron suggest that some are taking a closer look at Andrew Lansley's extraordinarily radical revolution. But this stealthy road to privatisation – never spoken of in public – meets the approval of senior Tories like Francis Maude and Oliver Letwin. What suddenly worries them is impending chaos along the route – financial, organisational, clinical and political. The NHS may fall over before Lansley's £3bn reorganisation is in place.

Dissect the Great Western Commissioning Consortium with its new United Healthcare partner. Three shaky PCTs join up, ordered to cut 50% of their staff. With no less a workload, everyone reapplies for half the jobs just as GPs need more help. Hounslow has tens of millions in historic debts. Hillingdon was bailed out by £19m last year, promising to stay in budget, but is already £6m overspent this year. After heroic efforts, Ealing balances its books, but is "incredibly fragile". Like the whole NHS, they must cut 4% a year every year for three years – which the Commons select committee warns was never achieved by any health service in the world: the NHS needs a 3% budget increase to stand still. With only half the managers, they will be even less able to guard outgoings day by day.

The district prided itself on shutting a whole hospital floor, by providing better community services. But with the freeze causing bone breaks, and now the flu, all 60 beds have been re-opened, at huge cost. The cuts mean GPs here, following other areas, will soon be banned from referring anyone for non-emergency surgery until April's new financial year.

That leads to three disasters: it only shunts trust debts to next year; it passes debts this year to hospitals whose surgeons twiddle their thumbs; and waiting lists soar. That's political poison since Labour all but abolished waiting lists for the first time ever. Meanwhile patient "choice" will be carried out on a stretcher. Cameron's personal pledge that the NHS budget was "protected" will be proved false – and privatisation will be unstoppable once the Pandora's box of competition law has been opened.

Labour has a good record on the NHS: the sneers that it spent too much will cut no ice with the public if the coalition causes a meltdown. Cameron has to face a government-shaking NHS crisis – or signal a sharp U-turn with the necessary sacking of Andrew Lansley.

Saskatchewan's Struggle for Medicare

Unsung Heroes in Saskatchewan's Struggle for Medicare

By Jim Harding


(listen to Jim’s interview on Vancouver Co-op Radio at: http://rabble.ca/podcasts/shows/redeye)

Also see The Struggle for Medicare in Saskatchewan

While mainstream discourse on the struggle for Medicare tends to credit the high-profile political leaders who fronted the movement, the struggle was in fact a collective one, won through popular grassroots support and the tireless work of countless community activists. These activists, whose combined voices were the real strength of the struggle, are however left out of the history books. They are systematically ignored in Saskatchewan’s Centennial Encyclopedia.

History is typically reconstructed by those currently in power, which serves to help stabilize the status quo. The idolization of Medicare’s political champions disregards the contributions of the popular grassroots movement to Medicare’s success across the country, which is disempowering and leaves us all more inclined to wait for the next Tommy Douglas to help us make history. In view of the imperative of tackling the climate crisis and moving towards sustainability we really can’t engage in such a waiting game. Remembering the grassroots history of Medicare is also a good first step toward reengaging to rejuvenate today’s deeply troubled healthcare system.

The text book history

Tommy Douglas

The standard story of the origins of Medicare highlights the contributions of Saskatchewan premiers Tommy Douglas and Woodrow Lloyd, Minister of Public Health Bill Davies and high-profile opponents of Medicare such as Father Athol Murray and Saskatchewan Medical Association (SMA) president Dr. Staff Barootes. Douglas is most readily associated with Medicare, which is likely why he won CBC’s “greatest Canadian” poll a few years back. In 1944, on a radio announcement during his election campaign, he famously declared “We believe…we can ultimately give our people a completely socialized system of health services, irrespective of…individual ability to pay.” In 1947, as Minister of Health as well as Premier, he brought forward the Saskatchewan Hospitalization Act – the first public financing for hospitals in Canadian history. Then, in 1959, when the economy was stronger and federal government under John Diefenbaker more supportive Douglas announced his plan to proceed with Medicare.

This deeply aggravated the province’s doctors who at the time jealously guarded private enterprise medicine. The Saskatchewan College of Physicians and Surgeons vocally opposed the plan, and they were supported by “Keep Our Doctors” (KOD) committees, which were established among mothers who were erroneously told they would lose their personal doctors under Medicare. The only mothers who were threatened during the actual crisis were those who were expecting babies and whose pro-Medicare doctor was refused hospital privileges. One pregnant mother protested this by parking herself on the doorsteps of a hospital. The political forces whipped up recently in the U.S. to oppose Obama’s watered-down attempt to get a public option in healthcare insurance are reminiscent of the extremist rhetoric of the KOD campaign. Some people feared for Premier Lloyd’s safety. We also now know that in 1962 American medical and pharmaceutical organizations worked behind the scene to try to stop Saskatchewan from becoming a continental beachhead for Medicare.

Woodrow Lloyd/Tommy Douglas

In 1961 Douglas left Saskatchewan to head up the newly founded New Democratic Party (NDP). Premier Woodrow Lloyd picked up the gauntlet for universal health coverage, introducing and eventually passing the Saskatchewan Medical Care Insurance Bill, making Saskatchewan the first province to have free universal medical insurance. As Minister of Public Health, Davies helped the province to avert a potentially catastrophic doctor shortage during the Doctors’ Strike of the summer of 1962 by bringing in doctors from abroad. After the Doctor’s Strike ended, Allan Blakeney replaced Davies as Health Minister. Later Blakeney became NDP leader after Woodrow Lloyd was forced out of this position in 1970, after losing the 1964 election to Ross Thatcher and the provincial Liberals. Lloyd went on to briefly work in international development with my father Bill Harding in the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) until his untimely death in 1972. In 1979 Diana Lloyd published a compelling and politically revealing biography of her father, entitled “Woodrow”.

Soon after Medicare was established, Chief Justice Emmett Hall headed a federal Commission appointed by Diefenbaker that recommended that Medicare be expanded across Canada, and in 1966 the Lester Pearson Liberal government passed the Medical Care Act which guaranteed publicly funded universal health insurance for all Canadians. The heated struggle in Saskatchewan had laid the basis for a Canada-wide plan. In 1984, under the committed leadership of the federal Health Minister, Monique Begin from Quebec, the liberal government passed the Canada Health Act to set out conditions for federal transfer payments for provincially-controlled healthcare. Medicare however continued to be threatened by the expansion of for-profit medicine.

The role of community clinics

Community clinics played a critical but often ignored role in the struggle for Medicare. While the Lloyd government was weakening, after the KOD rallied 5,000 people to the legislature on July 11, 1962 to oppose Medicare, grass-roots meetings were being held across the province to raise money to buy buildings and start community clinics that could hire doctors who supported Medicare. Thousands of people were mobilized. Doctors like Sam Wolfe and Orville Hjertaas helped establish clinics in Saskatoon and Prince Albert. British doctors were hired in Regina and elsewhere. Sam Wolfe went on to co-author the still definitive 1967 book, Doctor’s Strike: Medical Care and Conflict in Saskatchewan.

Woodrow Lloyd consistently praised the role of the community clinics in consolidating support for Medicare. Jack Kinzel, the first Secretary of the Medical Care Insurance Commission (MCIC), called the birth of the community clinics “a very important aspect of putting Medicare in place.” According to him, the “the activities of the clinics – the opening of the clinics in key centres in the province, small and large – did frighten the doctors and did make them uncertain about their ability to bring off what they were trying to do.” Speaking to Regina Community Clinic’s 1987 AGM, past Premier Allan Blakeney said that “Community clinics were on the very front line in the Medicare battle in 1962. They made Medicare possible”.

Unsung heroes

Stan Rands, who became the executive secretary of the Community Health Services Association (CHSA), is one of the unsung heroes in the development of community clinics and the launching of Medicare. Rands quit his 11-year job in Psychiatric Services, most recently as Assistant to the Director, to take on the new position in the midst of the heated conflict between doctors and government. In the Introduction to Rands book, Privilege and Policy: A History of Community Clinics in Saskatchewan, published post-humously, retired theology professor Ben Smillie wrote, “Rands, who calmly stood with [his wife] Doris in the eye of the storm, is one of the true heroes of Saskatchewan Medicare, and therefore a national hero of Canada.”

Stan worked closely with the CHSA’s founding President, Bill Harding, who had just returned from his first assignment with the UNDP to later become Provincial Secretary of the NDP and was Chairman of the Regina clinic board from 1962-65. These two men worked to the edge of exhaustion to establish clinic groups in 35 locations throughout the province. Stan and Bill also worked closely with Ed Mahood, renowned professor of Educational Foundations at the University of Saskatchewan, who was the first chair of the board of the Saskatoon clinic, which pioneered interdisciplinary community medicine in the province; and with Roy Atkinson, known most for being president of the National Farmers Union, who was founding Vice-President of the CHSA and followed Harding as its president There were hundreds of others putting their heart and soul into this work, but Stan Rands, Bill Harding, Ed Mahood and Roy Atkinson were the peaceful “generals” in the grassroots struggle for Medicare. They kept their cool in the face of provocation that tried to polarize and escalate the conflict and derail the Medicare legislation, and put organizational voice to the broad-based grass-roots support for Medicare.

Several other citizens groups sprung up in support of Medicare. Citizens for a Free Press, founded by long-time community activists Ben and Adele Smillie, lobbied the Saskatoon Star Phoenix newspaper to stop rejecting pro-Medicare letters to the editor. Saskatoon’s Citizens in Defense of Medicare also rallied people to show their support for Medicare.



Roy Atkinson

Though Medicare is certainly the highest profile event in Saskatchewan’s first hundred years, none of the major community clinic activists are mentioned in Saskatchewan’s Centennial Encyclopedia. (A tiny piece by Denis Gruending, who in 1973 authored The First Ten Years, Saskatoon Community Clinic, mentions only the doctors involved with the birth of the clinics.) Contrast this with high-profile opponents of Medicare. One of the most vocal anti-Medicare spokespersons was Father Athol Murray who regularly made incendiary speeches on behalf of the KOD, once saying “We must get off the fence and make our views known”, continuing, “This thing may break out into violence and bloodshed any day now, and God help us if it doesn’t.” He is profiled in the Centennial Encyclopedia as the founder of Notre Dame College at Wilcox, home of the Hounds hockey team, and being in the Saskatchewan Sports Hall of Fame, but his provocative, outrageous opposition to Medicare isn’t mentioned. Another high-profile, staunch opponent of Medicare profiled in the Encyclopedia is Dr. E.W. (Staff) Barootes, who was the SMA President in 1962, went on to be appointed to the Senate by the Mulroney government, and like Father Murray, was appointed to the Order of Canada.

The important role of the labour movement in creating Medicare is indirectly acknowledged in mainstream history. Public Health Minister Davies, who helped bring pro-Medicare doctors to Saskatchewan, came from labour into politics, as did Walter Smishek, Minister of Health under Blakeney, who the Centennial Encyclopedia notes stood alone in opposing user and deterrent fees when he sat on the Advisory Planning Committee prior to Medicare. The Encyclopedia also notes that long-time labour activist Clarence Lyons was the “first president of the Saskatoon Community Clinic.”

Margaret and Ed Mahood

Women have been mostly left out of the discourse around the origins of Medicare. During the Doctors’ Strike, when the overwhelming majority of doctors closed their doors, it was female doctors like Saskatoon’s Marg Mahood and Joan Whitney-Moore that kept their doors open to provide medical services. And the community clinics wouldn’t have gotten off the ground without women’s unpaid domestic labour – organizing fund-raising events, physically setting up and decorating the new clinics, and doing some volunteer office work. My mother, Bea, worked many long nights to sew curtains for all the Regina clinic office windows.

An unfortunate compromise

Desperate to end the Doctors’ Strike, the Lloyd government agreed to a compromise with the SMA. On July 23, 1962 the two parties signed the Saskatoon Agreement, which saw government acquiesce to doctors’ demands to keep fee-for-service as the sole form of payment. Those working at the grassroots to build community clinics tried to get the provincial cabinet to hold out for more popular support, but the government buckled under the political panic created by the strike. It agreed to alter the legislation to allow doctors to practice outside Medicare, to pay doctors under the plan 85% of the College of Physicians fee schedule, and to increase the power of the doctor’s business association, the SMA, within the MCIC. In his official centennial history, Saskatchewan: A New History, Professor Bill Waiser oversimplifies this by saying this was “removing sections…that implied government control of doctors.” This was the SMA’s clarion call but not what the conflict was about; it was primarily about defending for-profit , fee-for-service medicine or replacing this with a public system, like our educational system.

This rolling back of public policy was devastating to the community clinics. As Bob Reid notes in his 1988 popular history, More Than Medicine, the Regina clinic went through years of internal power struggles over community versus medical control of staffing and policy. Still having a monopoly on the clinic’s earning power, some doctors wanted to keep organizational power, and a clinic so divided could not build the needed team-work. The introduction of global budgets in the 1970s helped by providing some resources for interdisciplinary and preventative program development, but by then the momentum for community (“socialized”) medicine had waned. The hopeful province, which had seen 25 community clinics spring up from the grass-roots in less than a year, ended up by the mid-1990s with only 5 struggling clinics.

The history we create today

Despite passionate and hopeful beginnings, public healthcare in Canada is now in relapse. In 2001, with the growth of for-profit clinics threatening to expand two-tiered medicine, past Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanow was appointed to head the federal Commission on the Future of Healthcare. One main recommendation was about the need for primary healthcare reform. As Romanow said in 2002 “no other initiative holds as much potential for improving health and sustaining our healthcare system.” This will require full-service community health clinics, such as were envisaged during Saskatchewan’s struggle for Medicare. It was telling and a little ironic that Romanow had to go outside Saskatchewan, to a community clinic in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, to find what he called “the best kept secret in the country”. Today, only four community clinics survive in Saskatchewan.

Rather than Medicare leading to community-based access to progressive medical practice, much of the province’s and country’s population is dependent on impersonal, for-profit, walk in clinics. Provincial health care systems are a hodge-podge of private and public services, with important preventive services in Saskatchewan like massage and chiropractics now totally un-funded, while there is escalating public expenditure for many unnecessary, ineffective, risky but profitable pharmaceutics. Pharmacare user-fees discriminate against the disadvantaged and disabled, homecare for the bulging senior population is severely under-resourced, and dental insurance is far from universal and remains in private hands.

Evidence-based medicine makes only slow progress in an environment where private interests dominate and could have flourished much better in a thoroughly public Medicare. Meanwhile, many families are without continuity of care from family doctors. During the visionary days of the struggle for Medicare no one imagined the widespread indignity to come. Learning a balanced history of the struggle that acknowledges Medicare’s grass-root pioneers is the first step to creating new momentum to realize the vision of Medicare. Better knowing this popular history can also inspire us for making other vital social changes, such as the shift to a public, democratic renewable energy system.


http://nextyearcountrynews.blogspot.com/

Cuban Medical Brigade - Honour

By Nina Lakhani

The Indpendent

They are the real heroes of the Haitian earthquake disaster, the human catastrophe on America’s doorstep which Barack Obama pledged a monumental US humanitarian mission to alleviate. Except these heroes are from America’s arch-enemy Cuba, whose doctors and nurses have put US efforts to shame.

A medical brigade of 1,200 Cubans is operating all over earthquake-torn and cholera-infected Haiti, as part of Fidel Castro’s international medical mission which has won the socialist state many friends, but little international recognition.

Observers of the Haiti earthquake could be forgiven for thinking international aid agencies were alone in tackling the devastation that killed 250,000 people and left nearly 1.5 million homeless. In fact, Cuban healthcare workers have been in Haiti since 1998, so when the earthquake struck the 350-strong team jumped into action. And amid the fanfare and publicity surrounding the arrival of help from the US and the UK, hundreds more Cuban doctors, nurses and therapists arrived with barely a mention. Most countries were gone within two months, again leaving the Cubans and Médecins Sans Frontières as the principal healthcare providers for the impoverished Caribbean island.

Figures released last week show that Cuban medical personnel, working in 40 centres across Haiti, have treated more than 30,000 cholera patients since October. They are the largest foreign contingent, treating around 40 per cent of all cholera patients. Another batch of medics from the Cuban Henry Reeve Brigade, a disaster and emergency specialist team, arrived recently as it became clear that Haiti was struggling to cope with the epidemic that has already killed hundreds.

Since 1998, Cuba has trained 550 Haitian doctors for free at the Escuela Latinoamericana de Medicina en Cuba (Elam), one of the country’s most radical medical ventures. Another 400 are currently being trained at the school, which offers free education – including free books and a little spending money – to anyone sufficiently qualified who cannot afford to study medicine in their own country.

John Kirk is a professor of Latin American studies at Dalhousie University in Canada who researches Cuba’s international medical teams. He said: “Cuba’s contribution in Haiti is like the world’s greatest secret. They are barely mentioned, even though they are doing much of the heavy lifting.”

This tradition can be traced back to 1960, when Cuba sent a handful of doctors to Chile, hit by a powerful earthquake, followed by a team of 50 to Algeria in 1963. This was four years after the revolution, which saw nearly half the country’s 7,000 doctors voting with their feet and leaving for the US.

The travelling doctors have served as an extremely useful arm of the government’s foreign and economic policy, winning them friends and favours across the globe. The best-known programme is Operation Miracle, which began with ophthalmologists treating cataract sufferers in impoverished Venezuelan villages in exchange for oil. This initiative has restored the eyesight of 1.8 million people in 35 countries, including that of Mario Teran, the Bolivian sergeant who killed Che Guevara in 1967.

The Henry Reeve Brigade, rebuffed by the Americans after Hurricane Katrina, was the first team to arrive in Pakistan after the 2005 earthquake, and the last to leave six months later.

Cuba’s constitution lays out an obligation to help the worst-off countries when possible, but international solidarity isn’t the only reason, according to Professor Kirk. “It allows Cuban doctors, who are frightfully underpaid, to earn extra money abroad and learn about diseases and conditions they have only read about. It is also an obsession of Fidel’s and it wins him votes in the UN.”

A third of Cuba’s 75,000 doctors, along with 10,000 other health workers, are currently working in 77 poor countries, including El Salvador, Mali and East Timor. This still leaves one doctor for every 220 people at home, one of the highest ratios in the world, compared with one for every 370 in England.

Wherever they are invited, Cubans implement their prevention-focused holistic model, visiting families at home, proactively monitoring maternal and child health. This has produced “stunning results” in parts of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, lowering infant and maternal mortality rates, reducing infectious diseases and leaving behind better trained local health workers, according to Professor Kirk’s research.

Medical training in Cuba lasts six years – a year longer than in the UK – after which every graduate works as a family doctor for three years minimum. Working alongside a nurse, the family doctor looks after 150 to 200 families in the community in which they live.

This model has helped Cuba to achieve some of the world’s most enviable health improvements, despite spending only $400 (£260) per person last year compared with $3,000 (£1,950) in the UK and $7,500 (£4,900) in the US, according to Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development figures.

Infant mortality rates, one of the most reliable measures of a nation’s healthcare, are 4.8 per 1,000 live births – comparable with Britain and lower than the US. Only 5 per cent of babies are born with a low birth weight, a crucial factor in long-term health, and maternal mortality is the lowest in Latin America, World Health Organisation figures show. Cuba’s polyclinics, open 24 hours a day for emergencies and specialist care, are a step up from the family doctors. Each provides for 15,000 to 35,000 patients via a group of full-time consultants as well as visiting doctors, ensuring that most medical care is provided in the community.

Imti Choonara, a paediatrician from Derby, leads a delegation of international health professionals at annual workshops in Cuba’s third city, Camaguey. “Healthcare in Cuba is phenomenal, and the key is the family doctor, who is much more proactive, and whose focus is on prevention … The irony is that Cubans came to the UK after the revolution to see how the NHS worked. They took back what they saw, refined it and developed it further; meanwhile we are moving towards the US model,” Professor Choonara said.

Politics, inevitably, penetrates many aspects of Cuban healthcare. Every year hospitals produce a list of drugs and equipment they have been unable to access because of the American embargo which prevents many US companies from trading with Cuba, and persuades other countries to follow suit. The 2009/10 report includes drugs for childhood cancers, HIV and arthritis, some anaesthetics, as well as chemicals needed to diagnose infections and store organs. Pharmacies in Cuba are characterised by long queues and sparsely stacked shelves, though in part this is because they stock only generic brands.

Antonio Fernandez, from the Ministry of Public Health, said: “We make 80 per cent of the drugs we use. The rest we import from China, former Soviet countries, Europe – anyone who will sell to us – but this makes it very expensive because of the distances.”

On the whole, Cubans are immensely proud and supportive of their contribution in Haiti and other poor countries, delighted to be punching above their weight on the international scene. However, some people complain of longer waits to see their doctor because so many are working abroad. And, like all commodities in Cuba, medicines are available on the black market for those willing to risk large fines if caught buying or selling.

International travel is beyond the reach of most Cubans, but qualified nurses and doctors are among those forbidden from leaving the country for five years after graduation, unless as part of an official medical team.

Like everyone else, health professionals earn paltry salaries of around $20 (£13) a month. So, contrary to official accounts, bribery exists in the hospital system, which means some doctors, and even hospitals, are off-limits unless patients can offer a little something, maybe lunch or a few pesos, for preferential treatment.

Cuba’s international ventures in healthcare are becoming increasingly strategic. Last month, officials held talks with Brazil about developing Haiti’s public health system, which Brazil and Venezuela have both agreed to help finance.

Medical training is another example. There are currently 8,281 students from more than 30 countries enrolled at Elam, which last month celebrated its 11th anniversary. The government hopes to inculcate a sense of social responsibly into the students in the hope that they will work within their own poor communities for at least five years.

Damien Joel Suarez, 27, a second year from New Jersey, is one of 171 American students; 47 have already graduated. He dismisses allegations that Elam is part of the Cuban propaganda machine. “Of course, Che is a hero here but he isn’t forced down your neck.”

Another 49,000 students are enrolled in the El Nuevo Programa de Formacion de Medicos Latinoamericanos, the brainchild of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chavez, who pledged in 2005 to train 100,000 doctors for the continent. The course is much more hands-on, and critics question the quality of the training.

Professor Kirk disagrees: “The hi-tech approach to health needed in London and Toronto is irrelevant for millions of people in the Third World who are living in poverty. It is easy to stand on the sidelines and criticise the quality, but if you were living somewhere with no doctors, then you’d be happy to get anyone.”

There are nine million Haitians who would probably agree.

Brilliant Anti Cuts Video - By False Economy

Those who haven’t yet visited the new False Economy website will have missed this excellent video in support of their crowd-sourced anti cuts campaign. Great writing, high production values and eye catching kinetic typography make for compelling viewing:

Directed by Lucian Evans and presented by actor Sam West, we hope this isn’t the last such project from the False Economy team.

It makes most party political broadcasts look like BTEC media studies coursework.

Political Scrapbook

Lib Dem's - Nowhere to Run

Liberal Democrat conference cancelled over protest fears

Friday 03 December 2010

by Adrian Roberts
Morning Star

Fears over student protests have forced the Liberal Democrats to abandon a regional party conference planned for Saturday 4th December 2010.

Demonstrators had planned to target the event to voice their anger over the Lib Dems' ditching of a general election pledge to oppose tuition fee rises.

It had been set to take place at a north London school but party bosses were forced to look for somewhere else when the head teacher raised security concerns.

When the second venue (Royal Horticultural Halls in Vincent Square), said the same thing, the whole thing was pushed back to February.

"It has been postponed because of the venues' fears for security," a party spokesman said.

Fiona Edwards, a spokeswoman for protest organisers the Free Education Campaign, said the Lib Dems were "running scared."

"This reflects the fact that they are feeling the pressure from these student protests. They are running scared but we will keep chasing them down."

Ms Edwards said they had been expecting up to 1,000 people but were not sure whether any protest would go ahead now.

"It is a shame that they won't engage with students on this issue," she added.

MPs will vote on increasing fees 9th December. The Liberal Democrats continue to agonise over whether to vote for the plan.

The party is deeply divided, with some determined to vote against the measure in line with election promises.

Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, the target of much student anger, has refused to say how he plans to vote

Thora Silverthorne - Progressive Nursing Leader - 100th Anniversary

Thora Silverthorne 25th November 2010 will mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Thora Silverthorne. To celebrate this event a wreath will be laid at Reading Town Hall and a remembrance event will be held in the Thora Silverthorne rooms at UNISON Offices in Reading.

Thora Silverthorne

Nurses’ leader and International Brigader,

Thora Silverthorne was born in Abertillery on the 25th November 1910. She was the daughter of George Richard Silverthorne, a miner at the Vivian & Six Bells Pit and Sarah Boyt of Bargoed. Her early years were spent at 170 Alma Street, Abertillery, she secured a scholarship to Nataglo County School (Hafod) and attended the local Baptist church run by Pastor Rev Ivor Evans. She joined the Young Communist League at 16 and, when she was old enough, the Abertillery Communist Party. Her father was a founder member of the local Communist Party and active in the miners union. Thora chaired meetings with prominent speakers such as Arthur Horner, the miners’ leader. "Everyone in Abertillery talked politics," she was to say of these times.

With her mother’s early death, as one of seven children, she was forced to leave Abertillery for England. Initially she worked as a nanny for the local Labour MP, but also fitted in selling the Daily Worker to the local railwaymen.

She then followed her sister into nursing at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford and was involved in Communist Party activities in the city. She participated with her close friend Christopher Hill in the October Club. The health needs of the hunger marchers that passed through Oxford on their way to London were tended to by her “helping her self to bandages and dressings on the wards”. She recalled that “Their feet were often in particularly bad state.”In 1935 Thora secured a Sister’s post at Hammersmith hospital and worked closely with Dr Charles Wortham Brook and his wife, also a nurse, Iris. In 1935 Thora secured a Sister’s post at Hammersmith hospital and worked closely with Dr Charles Wortham Brook and his wife, also a nurse, Iris.and joined NUCO Guild of Nurses

At the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War she volunteered to nurse, and was "elected" Matron at Granen hospital, caring for many anti-fascist German soldiers in the Thaelmann Centuria. The International Brigader, Michael Livesey, died in her - arms a memory she never forgot. Later, she was herself drafted into the International Brigade.

On her return she married Dr Kenneth Sinclair-Loutit, who she had met in Spain, where he was the medical unit's administrator They lived at 12 Great Ormond Street. Loutit was elected as a “unity front” Councillor prior to the War for Holborn, London. Her involvement as sub editor of Nursing Illustrated led her to establish a nurses union (The National Nurses Association). This was a consciously progressive union for nurses in direct competition with the reactionary (Royal) College of Nursing. The RCN and hospital managers attacked her as “not being a registered nurse” or “paid by Moscow”, during the late 1930s. With the help of Communist Party nurses such as Nancy Blackburn (Zinkin), the Association ran a very high profile campaign to highlight the poor pay and conditions of nurses. The Association latter amalgamated with NUPE. Bryn Roberts, the General Secretary of that union was a native of Abertillery and a man whom Thora admired.

After the war she became a union official in the Civil Service Association. As Secretary of the Socialist Medical Association, she met Attlee and other Ministers to discuss the establishment of the NHS in 1948. She married Nares Craig (a relative of Lord Craigavon)  a member of the CP’s architect group (also Cambridge night climber) and retired to Llanfyllin, Powys, North Wales for 25 years. Clive Jenkins and Frank Cousins were regular visitors there. Thora returned to London, to be close to her daughter Lucy Craig/Best (a Haringey Labour Councillor), a few years before her death on 17th January 1999.

The funeral service at Marylebone cemetery on 25th January heard `the Valley of Jarama’, `The Internationale’, Cwm Rhondda and a recording of the Welsh hymn “Land of my fathers” by Paul Robeson

Keep The NHS Working

UNISON Keep our NHS Working and NHS Together Lobby of Parliament Summer 2006.

Pat McManus (Central Middx) , Desiree Clark and the late Lesley Kumarasamy (Kingston Primary Care Trust).

A Tribute to Lesley Kumarasamy,

UNISON Rep Kingston PCT

Longest surviving member of Kingston PCT of 33 years!

It is with deep sorrow and sadness that we have to say goodbye to a very special person who lost her life suddenly with cancer and died at Kingston hospital on Saturday 6^th January 2007. The funeral was at Kingston Vale on Saturday 13^th January where many tributes were made to her life. She leaves her husband, Kumar, two daughters Eleanor who is married to Dan, and Erin. She also leaves her mother, Alison who is in her eighties. Hundreds of mourners attended to pay their respects to a kind, caring and exceptional lady.

Lesley was well known throughout the local community of Tolworth an active member of St George’s church in Hamilton Avenue where she had many friends and helped in the Sunday school

She joined Kingston PCT on 24th September 1973 and had worked there for an amazing 33 years. She started as an Occupational Therapy (OT) assistant in the Day Hospital for Older People, running therapeutic groups such as reminiscence, cookery, arts and crafts and, yes, a bit of basket weaving! Following further training Lesley continued her work as an OT Technical Instructor on the in-patient rehabilitation wards. She really enjoyed her work with older people and always promoted the value of OT. She also valued her friends and colleagues very highly and enjoyed being part of the OT and Ward Team.

Lesley is remembered in her superb OT uniform of green trousers, white tunic and “dangly earrings”…

Lesley was extremely hard-working and recently represented OT as the union steward for Unison where she met many new friends including Desiree Clark who recalls the day they went to the Unison AGM at Tolworth hospital five years ago to find out who their local rep was only to be told “there isn’t one so maybe you would both like to join”. That was the moment when a great friendship and bond began including signing up new members, giving advice and support to members, representing staff side at meetings, rallying in Brighton and Parliament against the recent NHS cuts, talks with the local MP, Edward Davey, about the changes happening across the PCT and local community. Lesley also became her branch chair. She showed great enthusiasm, dedication and care in her work - above and beyond the call of duty.

Over the years she touched so many people’s lives and she was always smiling and never grumbled. She was a wonderful person who was generous and kind, but above all “genuine”.

Everyone will miss her dearly and she will be forever in our thoughts…….

UNISON 9/11 Ribbon and Badge

UNISON Nurses handing out 9/11 ribbons at 2002 TUC Congress at Blackpool

UNISON 9/11 Badge from September 2001 worn by London emergency services staff.

UNISON working with SEIU

Liar Liar Video - Join The Resistance

Hayes Cottage Hospital Occupation 25th October 1983

Hayes Cottage hospital, West London. Occupied 25th October 1983 until late December 1983, when the local health authority backed down and the hospital was saved.


Marge Bayne and Sylvia Tebbenham led the Occupation for the staff members of COHSE and NUPE.

Northwood & Pinner Cottage Hospital was also occupied at the same time starting 26th October, led by the Matron Jean Carey COHSE member.



This is a list of Hospital Occupations/Work in's
I have secured from various accounts.

HOSPITAL OCCUPATIONS IN BRITAIN


Rainhill Asylum 1913
Radcliffe (Nottingham) Asylum 1933
Elizabeth Garret Anderson Nov 1976 - 1978
South London Weir 1976
Cane Hill Hospital Sit in 18-21 August 1976
South Middlesex 1977
Plaistow Maternity 1977
Hounslow March 1977- Oct 1979
Bethnal Green July 1978
Brookwood May 1978
St Benedicts (Tooting) Nov 1978- Sept 1980
Etwall Dec 1979 - March 1980
St Georges (Hyde Park) Jan 1980
Longworth (Oxford) Dec 1980 Feb 1981
Princess Mary Feb-April 1980
St Marys Harrow Rd 1981
Brookwood 1982
Woodgreen & Southgate Oct 1982 - Dec 1982
Thornton View 5th Aug 1983-1985
Hayes Cottage Hospital Oct-Dec 1983
Northwood & Pinner Cottage Hospital Oct-Dec 1983
Botleys Park Dec 1983
Harpenden Memorial Hospital (Maternity) 2 weeks February-March 1985
South London Women's Hospital (Clapham) 26th July1984-1985
Neasden 1986
St Leonards, (Hackney) 3rd July 1984 - 16th July 1984
Wards at UCLH
NHS Direct Exeter 1st May 2012
NHS Direct Nottingham 5th July 2012

TUC Lobby 19th October 2010

Thousands of public sector workers have packed Central Hall to capacity with standing-room only as they protest against the coalition government's plans for huge cuts in public spending. Messages from the rally are giving us updates on events.

There was huge applause for Dave Prentis when he says make the banks pay. If there's money for them and for war, there's money for the poor and for public services. His call for a pay freeze for bankers went down well. Dave spoke up for communities and the public services they rely on.

Lizzie Louden a pupil at Leytonstone school is due to speak after Dave.

The TUC's Brendan Barber said those who did well from the boom should help pay for the bust they created.

'Cowardly' Tory MPs hide from their constituents

Dave Prentis, General Secretary of UNISON, today branded Tory MPs as “cowards” for turning their backs on their constituents, to join a last-minute meeting convened by David Cameron.Dave Prentis said:“It is a sad day for democracy in this country. I am outraged that Tory MPs have turned their backs on their constituents, when so many have travelled hundreds of miles, to see them.“Many had made appointments months in advance and are armed with facts and figures about the damage that cuts will do to local people and services.“MPs should not be running from the truth and hiding in a meeting with Cameron. They should have the guts to come face to face with the constituents that they were elected to represent.“I am warning the Tories that they can run, but they can’t hide. UNSON members will track down their MPs and lobby them in their own constituency offices, until they get their message across.”

Claire Rayners Last Words

Nurse: Claire Rayner

January 22 1931 - October 11 2010

Last Words

"Tell David Cameron
that if he screws up
my beloved NHS
I'll come back and
bloody haunt him!"

NHS Direct - A Critical Victory

U-TURN OVER CLOSURE OF NHS DIRECT

Commenting on reports that Health Minister Andrew Lansley has denied plans to shut down NHS Direct, Dave Prentis, General Secretary of UNISON, said:

³This is great news for patients and for staff at NHS Direct. The service that NHS Direct offers is tried and tested and is of great value to the public, as the outcry over the threat of closure shows. The service provides a reassuring voice for worried parents in the middle of the night and is a well of advice that the public can tap into 24 hours a day. Andrew Lansley should not have put nurses and staff in fear of their jobs in this way

³I am sure staff will still be confused and worried that the Government may have another change of heart. I would like a guarantee from the health minister that the 1,300 nurses working for NHS Direct will still have a job there this time next year.²

Michael Walker, UNISON national Officer for NHS Direct Staff, said:

³This sounds like fantastic news and a victory for common sense. It shows the effectiveness of the Unions campaign against the threat to axe NHS Direct. There has been a real groundswell of opposition from the public, with thousands of people signing a petition against the closure.

³The service employs 3,400 NHS dedicated specialist nurses and professionals and provides expert help - taking more than 27,000 calls a day. It successfully takes the pressure off the emergency services and from busy GP surgeries.

³However, I think we still need to be vigilant. I want to hear more detail of Andrew Lansley¹s announcement today, to make sure that staff and the valuable service they provide, are truly protected in the longer term."

"UNISON congratulates NHS Direct staff and their union reps for getting behind the campaign and making their views known to the public"

UNISON 0845 355 0845

Lib Dem's to Axe 1,000 Nurses

Lib Dem's to Axe 1,000 Nurses

at NHS Direct

Gail Adams UNISONhead of nursing said

"NHS Direct is a ground-breaking success story that has taken pressure off the emergency services and provided much needed advice and support to people.

"Private call centres with unqualified staff can never replace this excellent service, that provides vital, immediate support such as during the swine flu outbreak that saw scores of people die."

NHS Direct UNISON Official Michael Walker added:

"Not one Coalition party stated they would scrap NHS Direct in their manifesto. There is no mandate for cutting this service . If the government attack NHS Direct, what else is next? What other NHS cuts are they hiding? It is time for Cameron and Clegg to come clean about their real plans for our NHS."

"If the Lib Dems get their way 1,000 registered nurses, many of whom are disabled, will be sacked if this plan goes ahead".

"The shocking truth is this is the front line, these are real registered nurses and they are now facing the sack".

2,300 NHS dedicated specialist nurses and professionals are available on NHS Direct 24 hours a day.

ends