Former nurse writes to Labour MP over treatment of mother

Mark Evans, Swansea and West Wales Socialist Party  

My family’s recent experience of the NHS was an example of what most people know – the NHS in Wales is on the critical list.

My wife’s mother suffered a fall and, after waiting for five-and-a-half hours for an ambulance, then spent over five days on a trolley in A&E with no privacy or call bell. She did not have an appropriate pressure relieving mattress, increasing the risks of pressure sores. She was unable to get the attention of staff and no one offered to take her to the toilet, which she could not do on her own. As a result, she twice wet herself and was left in this condition for a considerable period of time.

Grossly underfunded for many years and understaffed, in large part due to insufficient pay levels, the NHS in Wales cannot meet the needs of its population. This is despite over 25 years of a Labour government in the Senedd. Most people in Wales would have been astounded by Mark Drakeford’s (ex-first minister and before that health minister) remarks on a podcast that he thought there were ‘too many hospitals and too many beds’ in Wales!

Everyone’s experience of the NHS would contradict these claims. The point that Mark Drakeford was clumsily trying to make was that more money should be spent on primary care. We assume to prevent hospital admissions but the whole of the NHS is underfunded and putting more of the inadequate funding into primary care at the expense of hospital funding is not a solution.

The Welsh Labour government has tried to close hospitals before and has had to abandon these plans as working-class people rose up in opposition. The Welsh Labour government has been complicit in the deterioration of the NHS in Wales through passing on central government underfunding.

Rather than trying to make a silk purse out of sow’s ear by claiming that the extra funding they received from the Labour government in Westminster, while welcome, was a game changer when the amount the NHS receives in Wales will have the effect of dropping a pebble in the sea.  They should be demanding and campaigning for Starmer’s Labour to fully fund the NHS, and other public services, in Wales.

Our family’s recent experience is a graphic example of how an underfunded NHS cannot meet the needs of those that use it and can’t do without it.

My wife, a nurse who worked in the NHS in Morriston Hospital, Swansea, for 30 years – 25 of these years under a Labour government in the Senedd – wrote to our local Labour MP for Gower Tonia Antoniazzi about the poor treatment her mother received in Morriston Hospital, calling on her to call for the Labour government to fully fund the NHS.

Frankly, we are not going to hold our breath. The health unions, including Unison, need to demand a fully funded NHS and if Labour refuses to do this then the trade union leaders should draw the conclusion that they need to build a new mass workers’ party that fights for a fully funded NHS and other socialist policies.