British Protesters rally against declining semi-privatized healthcare system

Compiled by Paul Chen

	Anti-nuclear and anti-war protests rock the United Kingdom.

Saturday, 3rd March, saw a national day of action to defend the National Health Service (NHS), called by NHS Together, an alliance of health service unions and staff associations together with the TUC. Demonstrations and rallies took place across the country, in Birmingham, Cambridge, Hackney (London), Leeds, Preston, Sheffield and other places. The aim of the protests, according to the organisers, was "to send a powerful message in celebration and defence of the NHS" against more cuts and privatisation. Almost three quarters of NHS trusts in the UK are reported last year that financial deficits are forcing them to make massive cutbacks; wards are being closed down, hospitals shut and jobs cut. Billions are going into 'restructuring' the service along market lines, with millions going on management consultants and financial advisers and millions more, in massive PFI payments, to shareholders and bankers.

Despite the huge government 'investments' over the past 10 years in the NHS, many hospitals remain short of doctors - at both the Consultant level (i.e. those who have complete the many years of medical school and postgraduate training) and at the level of Junior Doctors: the people who are to be found on the wards on a daily basis. Why is this? The number of medical graduates has approximately doubled in this time, yet the number of unemployed doctors in the UK has also grown; the actual number, however, is not known, "due to the majority of [them] being too proud to sign on at the unemployment office. Add to this, there is also an unrecorded number of international doctors who have taken the PLAB at great personal expense, but with little opportunity of finding training posts."

Why? Part of the reason has been a governmental restructuring of training: a farce that has been unfolding this calendar year with the introduction of MMC: Modernising Medical Careers. Whilst the intentions behind this may be good - a swifter evolution through the training schemes, meaning that the overall time required to become a hospital doctor is shortened from 14 years to 11 years, and a more structured program - the implementation has been disastrous and poorly thought out, with no pilot schemes prior to the entire NHS switching over. Combined with the European Working Time Directive (meaning that junior doctors may only work limited hours per week), many believe that the medical training in the UK has gone down the pan, and what in recent years was an influx of doctors may now turn to mass emigration, at least for those who are able.

Unfortunately, many immigrant doctors are now bound to this country by family concerns, a disastrous situation about which they got no forewarning (and which, sadly, lead to one doctor committing suicide whilst the judgement for a High Court appeal against government policy was pending; the appeal failed). Compounding all this has been a cut in pay this year, in real terms, with doctors' salaries increasing by only 1 or 2%, less than the rate of inflation. Is this how much the NHS is valued?

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