Coronavirus: A ‘useful’ cull on Scotland’s old and infirm
Do we much care what former government officials say or think? Over Brexit we were told that we should. Ex-politicians and wonks got to opine on the BBC and big media on how their replacements were getting it wrong. Tony Blair and his spin doctor Alistair Campbell were ubiquitous, telling us that the will of the people was to remain in the EU. Others with spoon-shaped profiles also proliferate. Here’s Professor June Andrews. She said the coronavirus might be “useful” in killing off NHS bed blockers. The virus would take elderly “out of the system”. The system is more important than the patients that give it purpose. The system is all.
Her words are news because, as you know, Professor Andrews is, it says here, the former director of the Scottish Government’s Centre for Change and Innovation. “Fury as ex-Government health official says coronavirus pandemic would be ‘useful’ for killing off NHS bed blockers,” says the Sun. “Coronavirus could be ‘quite useful’ in killing off NHS bed blockers, says ex official,” reports the Mirror. “Former Scottish government worker claims a coronavirus pandemic ‘would be quite useful’ in killing off NHS bed blockers in the wake of the first UK death,” says the Mail, which included the following reactions from Outraged of Twitter:
Speaking at Holyrood’s public audit committee, The Herald reports she said:
“If you’re on the board of a care home company, a pandemic is one of things you think about as a potential damage to your business because of the number of older people it’s going to take out of the system. Curiously, ripping off the sticking plaster, in a hospital that has 92 delayed discharges, a pandemic would be quite useful because your hospital would work because these people would be taken out of the system.”
The paper adds:
Professor June Andrews recognised her comments were “horrific” but gave an honest assessment of the potential consequences of a large-scale coronavirus outbreak.
Chief executive of Age Scotland, Brian Sloan, was quick to call the Prof’s opinion “breath-takingly callous” and “nothing short of barbaric”.
The Indy notes:
Prof Andrews, who is an adviser to the Dementia Services Development Trust, said she had since been targeted by people online for her comments. “The one thing I had learned from this is I should never use irony,” she said. I “was asking the question about what the politicians were expecting to happen; do they just expect the old people to disappear.”
Andrews wrote into the Herald’s letters page:
I WISH to express my concern about the selective reporting of my evidence at the Scottish Parliament yesterday.
We were discussing NHS leadership failings and future workforce and I wanted to make the point that people working in NHS Scotland have an impossible job, even before the coronavirus struck, because tough planning and strategy decisions have been politically ducked.
We have known for decades that the number of older people needing care is rocketing, yet no provision has been made outside the hospital – which is not a safe place to be if you do not really need to be there. Access to care homes and home care is clearly limited, otherwise no one would be a delayed discharge patient in hospital.
Perhaps the coronavirus outbreak that we are experiencing will finally force politicians to listen to what staff and NHS managers are unable to say, which is that we have to make provision in the community for older people to be cared for properly.
Professor June Andrews, Edinburgh.
Her fuller comment is thus:
“As a nurse my job is to be kind, but I also rip off sticking plasters, so sometimes it seems unkind what you have to say. If you’re on the board of a care home company a pandemic is one of the things you think about as a potential damage to your business because of the number of older people it is going to take out the system. Curiously, ripping off the sticking plaster, in that hospital I’m thinking about that has 92 delayed discharges, a pandemic would be quite useful because then your hospital would work because these people would be taken out of the system. Now that sounds like a horrific thing to say, but it is the case that somehow or other we have put people in the wrong places by not having the kind of strategic views we should have. That means that politicians who don’t want to think about bad things before the election, need to think about putting income tax up even higher in order to pay for more care in care homes and they need to think about whether they reinstate geriatric hospitals.”
Irony might be dead. Can we get a second opinion?
PS: This also in the outrage Telegraph:
Opinions to deadline until we’re all dead.
Posted: 20th, March 2020 | In: News Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
