Irina Malenko: Britain’s best hospital is… in France

Britain’s best hospital is situated…in France, Dutch journalist Villem Kool reports about the consequences of a great crisis in the British public health system. There is no good public medical care in the country that has enough money for bombing Afghanistan and other countries!

Now the English are perfectly sure that Britain’s best hospital is in France, in Lille to be precise. The long list of the patients waiting for an operation in Britain reduced by nine persons, when the first British patients came back home after operations in the French hospital. The British government must be ashamed of this fact. But the government has completely lost control over the public medical care, that is why patients are sent for operations abroad. Doing so, the government tries to restrain the increasing anger of the public opinion.

As an experiment, British patients, who have been waiting for operations for more than a year, are sent to the hospital in France. The British government takes all spending upon itself. British Minister for Public Health Care Alan Milburn decreed to change “bad managers” of the British hospitals for “private businessmen”. The result of it will be even more lamentable for the British people. Privatization of the railways in Britain may serve an example for such actions.

The Dutch journalist says, the British patients are extremely pleased with the services provided in the French hospital: all necessary things are provided in the wards, the personnel is extremely polite and kind. Two hundred patients more are to arrive in France for medical treatment within the next ten weeks. If the experiment succeeds (and not doubt that it is to be a success), it will be applied everywhere, despite its high cost.

Horror stories about British old-fashioned hospitals are being told all around Great Britain. The medical personnel has to work in a non-stop regime for 24, 36, 48 and even more hours. Certainly, the quality of such medical care leaves much to be desired.

Scotch hospital Victoria had to be closed a week ago, when three patients of the hospital died of salmonella. The rest 157 patients were subject to diarrhea and nausea as well.

But British private hospitals are not better than the hospital Victoria. Perhaps, they are a bit more neat, but the quality of the services is still poor. A young woman died in childbed only because the doctors forgot to measure her blood pressure; the woman died of cerebral hemorrhage. The compensation at the rate of 1,2 million euro will hardly console the husband of the woman.

In addition to the description of the wonderful hospital in France, where patients are so wonderfully treated, I would like to say, hospital wards look the same way even in Cuba. Recently a member of my family underwent medical treatment there. Certainly, good quality of the medical care in Cuba is never mentioned in the British press that often calls Cuba a poor and totalitarian country. But still, Cuba appropriates enough money for medical treatment of the people, unlike Britain, that has evidently got money only for bombing Afghanistan and Iraq, occupation in Kosovo and other things of the kind.

Translated by Maria Gousseva

Read the original in Russian: http://www.pravda.ru/main/2002/01/25/36095.html