Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
By a Welsh NHS nurse
Following a damning report on maternity deaths at Cwm Taf Health Board, maternity services have been put in to special measures. Between January 2016 and September 2018, there were around 25 serious incidents including eight still births and five neonatal deaths at the Royal Glamorgan hospital, Llantrisant and Prince Charles hospital, Merthyr Tydfil.
Parents report appalling conditions, including mothers being denied pain relief, their concerns being ignored, and delays in being reviewed by senior staff when there were complications. One mother reported seeing overworked midwives crying on the labour ward. The official report in to the deaths is shocking. It shows a serious lack of midwives and senior doctors, and a blame culture where staff couldn’t report concerns.
Health Minister Vaughn Gethin has been called in to resign. Although few in the NHS would be sorry to see him go, these failings are down to more than one person’s mismanagement.
The NHS has been consistently underfunded and understaffed for decades including when Mark Drakeford was health minister. Health boards in Wales are £97.4m in deficit and the government has been refusing to bail them out, demanding they make cuts to break even.
The South Wales Programme was implemented in 2013 to centralise specialist services The Welsh government claimed that the re-organisation had nothing to do with cuts but was mainly due to difficulties in recruiting staff. But Instead of improving pay, conditions and training incentives, which would improve recruitment without putting patients at risk, the Welsh government downgraded services such as maternity and emergency care in a number of hospitals. The Royal Glamorgan and Prince Charles were two of those hospitals, and the Socialist Party protested this at the time.
The author of the report used as the design for this downgrading and centralisation was Professor Marcus Longley who is now the chair of Cwm Taf health board and was forced to apologise for the terrible failings of the maternity services by his board. But Cwm Taf are going ahead with centralising most of the services at Prince Charles hospital in Merthyr forcing patients in the Rhondda to travel long distances to the hospital.
Welsh Labour blame cuts on the Tories in Westminster. This is a weak excuse. Welsh Labour could topple the Tories by rallying working people across Wales to demand more funding. Mass movements and coordinates strikes led by the Trade Union Congress could quickly bring down such a weak and divided government. A Corbyn government with socialist policies could be pushed to reverse underfunding and privatisation of the NHS.
