{"id":346725,"date":"2018-02-04T03:47:31","date_gmt":"2018-02-04T02:47:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-human-cost-of-the-destruction-of-the-national-health-service\/"},"modified":"2018-02-04T03:47:31","modified_gmt":"2018-02-04T02:47:31","slug":"the-human-cost-of-the-destruction-of-the-national-health-service","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/the-human-cost-of-the-destruction-of-the-national-health-service\/","title":{"rendered":"The human cost of the destruction of the National Health Service"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"content\">\n<h3 class=\"nomargin\">\u00a0<\/h3>\n<h2>The human cost of the destruction of the National Health Service<\/h2>\n<h5>\n<p>    By<br \/>\n    NHS FightBack<br \/>\n    <br \/>3 February 2018<\/p>\n<\/h5>\n<p>The thousands marching today in defence of the National Health Service (NHS) represent millions opposed to its destruction.<\/p>\n<p>The NHS faces far more than a \u201cwinter crisis.\u201d Rather, this winter has exposed how years of funding cuts, running down of services, combined with chronic staff shortages is threatening the safety and lives of patients.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In December, more than 300,000 patients waited more than four hours in England\u2019s A&amp;E departments to be seen, treated and discharged or admitted. The percentage of patients being treated within four hours fell to its lowest-ever level of 77.3 percent. Only three out of 137 NHS trusts managed to meet the official 95 percent target.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>NHS units are unable to discharge many patients due to lack of social care and the loss of available beds. Many hospitals are running at a dangerous level of bed occupancy of more than 95 percent\u201410 percent higher than recommended as safe.<\/p>\n<p>Standard targets for Accident and Emergencies (A&amp;Es), cancer treatment and planned operations have all been missed. This year began with news of NHS England\u2019s decision to postpone tens of thousands of non-urgent operations and outpatient clinics until the end of January to help hospitals cope with demand.<\/p>\n<p>An Ambulance Service whistle-blower told the <em>Health Service Journal<\/em> that in the East of England alone at least 40 patients had been \u201charmed or died following significant ambulance delays\u201d in less than three weeks between mid-December and early January.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A 57-year-old man in Suffolk froze to death after a 16-hour wait for an ambulance. An 81-year-old woman in Clacton on Sea, Essex died complaining of chest pain after a four-hour wait for an ambulance. An&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wsws.org\/en\/articles\/2018\/02\/03\/heal-f03.html\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 The human cost of the destruction of the National Health Service By NHS FightBack 3 February 2018 The thousands marching today in defence of the National Health Service (NHS) represent millions opposed to its destruction. The NHS faces far more than a \u201cwinter crisis.\u201d Rather, this winter has exposed how years of funding cuts, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2526,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-346725","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2526"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346725\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}