Skip to main content

Can you trust Labour with the NHS? Should Andy Burnham Go?

Labour have to respond to the revelations today that they did not respond properly to being sent data on higher than expected death rates from 2001.

The link above is from an interview on BBC Breakfast (That I watched whilst in the Gym as one does).
Sir Brian Jarman, Emeritus Professor at Imperial College's School of Public Health has said information on higher-than-expected death rates was ignored for more than a decade.
He told BBC Breakfast: "My view is that there was political pressure for the information to be ignored and had been ignored at least since 2001.
"I actually sent the data to Andy Burnham in March 2010 and seven of the hospitals in the 14 were among the ones that I sent him."
"We published the information in national newspapers every year from 2001 onwards," he added.
We also have the further revelations about the Liverpool Care Pathway. This seems to have been used in the case of John Maddocks whose daughter was imprisoned in secret for taking him to a solicitor in an attempt to rescue him from a care home (in which he died).

To me it appears clear that Labour were more intent on covering up problems with the NHS than sorting them out. That is a very strong allegation to which they have to respond, but I think it is in practise too late.

Andy Burnham, himself, is in a touch and go situation. March 2010 was a relatively late point at which he could have responded. However, he was health minister for much of this period and part of the Labour government complacency about inadequate standards in the NHS.

The interview also mentioned that the Labour administration and the heads of the regulators have already admitted substantially that there was a cover up going on.

My own view is that the obsession with targets deprioritized the care of patients.

Comments

Mr. Hemming.

You, and your readers, might be interested in this very short video of Jersey Justice in action HERE

Popular posts from this blog

Its the long genes that stop working

People who read my blog will be aware that I have for some time argued that most (if not all) diseases of aging are caused by cells not being able to produce enough of the right proteins. What happens is that certain genes stop functioning because of a metabolic imbalance. I was, however, mystified as to why it was always particular genes that stopped working. Recently, however, there have been three papers produced: Aging is associated with a systemic length-associated transcriptome imbalance Age- or lifestyle-induced accumulation of genotoxicity is associated with a generalized shutdown of long gene transcription and Gene Size Matters: An Analysis of Gene Length in the Human Genome From these it is obvious to see that the genes that stop working are the longer ones. To me it is therefore obvious that if there is a shortage of nuclear Acetyl-CoA then it would mean that the probability of longer Genes being transcribed would be reduced to a greater extent than shorter ones.