Belfast Health Trust plans to ration services will put lives at risk

Written by Pat Lawlor, West Belfast Socialist Party spokesperson Friday, 02 July 2010 11:49

Health campaigner calls on unions to build for mass demonstration

The Belfast Health and Social Care Trust have announced plans to cut emergency surgery from the City and Mater hospitals and centralise the service in the Royal Victoria Hospital by 2013.

Centralising emergency surgery in the Royal Victoria can, in and of itself, potentially put lives at risk due to increased travel time for patients. However, this is just the beginning.

Thoracic and Vascular beds under threat at Royal Victoria

Written by Pat Lawlor, West Belfast Socialist Party Monday, 28 June 2010 11:54

The management of the Belfast Health and Social Care Trust continue unabated with their agenda of cuts to frontline services. The Socialist Party can exclusively reveal that Thoracic and Vascular wards 4A and 4B in the Royal Victoria Hospital are to be amalgamated with the loss of approximately half the beds.

Save Mid-Ulster and Whiteabbey Hospitals

Written by Ciaran Mulholland, Unite/AMICUS Health Services Branch (personal capacity) Tuesday, 08 June 2010 08:30

The Accident and Emergency services at the Mid-Ulster Hospital in Magherafelt and Whiteabbey Hospital in Newtownabbey closed in May. Now all patients in the Northern Trust area have to travel to the Antrim Area Hospital. The Antrim Hospital was widely accepted to be under immense pressure before these closures. The situation will deteriorate further now, with even longer waiting times for casualty treatment and even more patients spending hours or days on trolleys. Prior to this latest cutback the Northern Trust had halted more complex surgery at the Mid-Ulster Hospital and Whiteabbey Hospital and concentrated it at the Antrim and Causeway Hospitals. Both smaller hospitals are no longer acute hospitals, dealing with a full range of illness, and accessible to the surrounding population.

Mid-Ulster A&E: Mass demonstration Friday 28 May

Written by Lucia Collins, Mid-Ulster Socialist Party Monday, 24 May 2010 11:42

It was fantastic to see so many local people come out onto the streets of the town on Friday night to demonstrate their anger at the threat to Mid-Ulster A&E services. But it is crucial that this is the start and not the end of a campaign. Today, the Health Minister and Trust management to close A&E services, but the fight is not over. It is a purely administrative decision which can be overturned if there is enough pressure applied by ordinary people.

Magherafelt says: "Don't close our A&E"

Written by Paddy Meehan Friday, 21 May 2010 21:41

Over 800 people attended a protest against the closure of the Mid-Ulster A&E in Magherafelt. Politicians from Sinn Fein, DUP and SDLP spoke at the protest despite the fact that they voted 3 times in the last 18 months for these cuts.

A Socialist Party leaflet stated:
"The four main parties in the Assembly Executive agreed the recent budget and ‘efficiency savings’ which included huge cuts in health. Politicians from all the parties also sit on the Health Trusts, rubber stamping cuts. If they were really opposed to the cuts, they should resign from the bodies and call on their parties not to implement the attacks. In reality, the main parties all accept the logic that ordinary people must pay for the economic crisis of the bosses and bankers, through attacks on jobs, conditions and public services."

More to follow

Belfast Health Trust report: under-resourced home care to replace rehabilitation unit

Written by Pat Lawlor, West Belfast Socialist Party Thursday, 01 April 2010 09:35

The Belfast Health Trust has claimed that the slashing of two-thirds of rehabilitation beds housed in the Elliot Dynes unit will be absorbed by community-based services. However, the Socialist Party has come into possession of a study entitled ‘Review of Patients in Elliot Dynes Rehabilitation Unit, Royal Victoria Hospital- December 2009’.

This review highlights the fact that a number of people became inpatients at the unit unnecessarily because these same community services, which would have been more appropriate, simply did not have the resources for them! Thus, without a huge increase in funding for these services, which the Trust management has failed to demonstrate any evidence of, the loss of beds at Elliot Dynes will be a drastic cut which will effect some of the most vulnerable in our society.

Pat Lawlor speaks out against health cuts

Written by Pat Lawlor Monday, 29 March 2010 08:30

Pat Lawlor, West Belfast Socialist Party spokesperson speaks at the Socialist Party picket of the Belfast Health Trust's meeting