The Socialist 5 February 2020

6.5 million working poor: Fight to end low pay

6.5 million working poor: Fight to end low pay

Labour leadership contest and public ownership

Coronavirus exposes capitalism's weaknesses in healthcare and economy

Record dissatisfaction with democracy: capitalism's dead end

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Them & Us

Nationalise the railways: For an integrated public transport system

Expensive, overcrowded and unreliable: Renationalise the railways!

Cancel the franchise, not our trains

Will the North get investment and transport infrastructure?

'Post-Brexit' era of crisis ahead

Huge victory for Bromley library workers after 241 days on indefinite strike!

14 more days of university strikes over pensions, pay and conditions

500 BBC journalists' jobs under threat

Newham council tax workers' pay victory

No to academisation of east London schools!

Ealing tax office workers strike against closure

Outrageous waiting times will put lives at risk

NHS: Save stroke beds in Coventry and Warwickshire

Syria: Assad regime consolidates power after brutal counterrevolution

Israel/Palestine: Trump 'peace plan' promises further conflict

Socialist Party calls anti-austerity protest on Budget Day

Sadiq Khan "out-Tories" himself to defend tech firms' tax bonanza

Socialist Sellers

Reading Labour council: Stop privatising our leisure services

The rich fund the Tories and Blairites, so help fund the working-class fightback

Support the working-class press in 2020

Defend and fight for warm, safe housing for Samira and everyone

Alternative Burns Night success

Liverpool council: "No more cuts" - Is Joe Anderson serious?

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NHS: Save stroke beds in Coventry and Warwickshire

Save our NHS, photo Mary Finch (Click to enlarge)

Coventry and Warwickshire will lose 30 stroke beds when existing facilities in hospitals in Nuneaton and Warwick close. All future emergency care for stroke patients will be centralised in Coventry, putting pressure on already-stretched facilities.

Warwickshire patients previously would have gone to more local facilities, but will now be taken to Coventry. Additional ambulance travel times could put lives at risk

Under the plans, 70% of stroke patients who have received emergency treatment will then be discharged to at-home care, at a time when community health and social services are already overstretched and underfunded.

The remaining 30% will be relocated to Nuneaton and Leamington, increasing the cost and difficulties of travel and inevitably reducing visits from some families, just at the time when patients need most support.

NHS managers claim the redesigned service will provide better care, but admit there are "insufficient specialist stroke consultants to operate an improved and effective service within the current configuration." They are essentially making a virtue out of a necessity, reducing emergency treatment locations to match staff shortages.

It's underfunding that is forcing the redesign of services, taking them further away from local communities. And underfunding should be tackled not local people disadvantaged.

Activists from Coventry and Rugby Keep Our NHS Public, including Socialist Party members, have collected nearly 500 signatures opposing the plan to cut stroke beds

Health campaigners and trade unionists should demand a national demonstration to unite the dozens of similar campaigns around the country, with national trade union action to force the end of these Tory 'rationalisations', and win proper national funding for the NHS.