NHS Threats

Doctors for the NHS Chair Colin Hutchinson, acting in his capacity as local Councillor, pointed out the (many) shortcomings of the current test & trace system on Newsnight [16m 20s] on 11 November.  (more…)

The winning essay to our Essay Competition – in association with the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine – this year delivered a powerful argument for democratising healthcare. By Joseph Freer. You can download it from here.  (more…)

A local solution to test and trace that gives local people protection. The deficiencies of the National Test and Trace system are being highlighted on a daily basis, but with little detailed discussion of how it could be improved.  Many countries that have performed much better than the UK have been clear that effective contact….

Public Sector Focus News has published an article on Test & Trace by DFNHS’s Communications Manager Alan Taman. You can read it here  

DFNHS Chair Colin Hutchinson has called for the NHS to be given enough funding to stop the growing number of people forced to ‘go private’ or face unbearable or even life-threatening waits – creating two-tier system the NHS was meant to prevent.  (more…)

An NHS trust, working with the local authority in Newcastle, is to run a new ‘Lighthouse lab’ for Covid testing and tracing amidst growing evidence that the government’s privatised, delocalised ‘call-centre’ model (run by private firms Serco and Sitel) is failing to provide anything like an adequate service.  (more…)

Policy failure Richard Horton, editor of the prestigious medical journal ‘The Lancet’, described the management of COVID-19 as the “greatest science policy failure for a generation” in his book on the pandemic. Currently the numbers of newly diagnosed patients are steeply rising with many wondering if the government has completely lost its grip. So –….

A timely and shocking report compiled by ‘Amnesty International’ opens with the stark figure of 3000 health workers losing their lives due to the global COVID-19 pandemic up to the time of writing, with a warning that this figure: (more…)

Keep Our NHS Public and Health Campaigns Together are supporting a series of protests for Saturday 8 August, over the government’s refusal to include NHS workers in any pay increase deal this year, despite the massive sacrifices made during the pandemic. Please join your local meeting if you can: (more…)

On 21st May, the UK Government scrapped the Immigration Health Surcharge (IHS) for migrant NHS staff and care workers – a fee which migrant workers must pay in order to access the NHS, in addition to ever-increasing Tier 2 work visafees [1]. This exemption was sorely needed and long fought for, particularly since the government….