Socialist Party Wales Socialism In Wales
By Sam Cartwright, Wrexham
On the 6th of March Ian Stevenson (86) was walking to his home in Johnstown, Wrexham when he was struck by a passing car. According to the family, the first call to the emergency services was made at 19:31 pm, but the ambulance did not arrive for another four hours leaving Mr. Stevenson on the ground in cold, rainy weather. Unfortunately, Mr. Stevenson passed shortly after the ambulance arrived.
The Welsh Ambulance Service has said that at the time of the call all its vehicles were already committed to other patients. The family has said that the ambulance had come all the way from Dolgellau (over an hour’s drive away from the incident location). When it did arrive, however, the driver was the only staff member on board fortunately two off-duty paramedics had been passing by and tried to help Mr. Stevenson by performing CPR in the back of the ambulance but to no avail.
This man’s death rests solely in the hands of every government official that signed off on the cuts.
And this is not an isolated incident: the BBC reports that the Wales A&E and ambulance services are at their worst ever with figures from October 2021 showing that fewer than 65% of patients in A&E spent less than four hours to be seen. Further figures show that 9,484 people had to wait more than 12 hours in urgent care departments in October the highest number recorded and up from 8,485 the month before.
Statistics also show that there are 668,801 people waiting for planned treatment as of September 2021 – 21% of the total Welsh population. This is beyond unacceptable. How many of those patients will not get seen in time and possibly result in further avoidable tragedies?
It is time that politicians were held to account for these heinous cuts. Britain is the fifth largest economy in the world, and they want you to believe that there is no money to support our beloved NHS and they need the funds of private investors to keep it afloat. But the people can not be fooled so easily it is time we put pressure on government officials to improve the NHS and provide adequate funding.
The Welsh government should refuse to pass on any more cuts demanded by the Tories to the NHS or any other public services. Mr. Stevenson’s death was an avoidable tragedy one that cannot be allowed to happen again. It is however important that we remember it is not the workers who are to blame they have no more control over the funding than you or I. it is the fault of every MP and Senedd Member who voted for cuts to services.
That is the cost of underfunding our NHS: lives.
