I’m still very upset about the dirty hospitals! No, actually that's wrong; I'm not upset, I'm furious, I'm hugely pissed off! I am deeply offended that this is going on in modern Britain. I am profoundly angry that yet another crime is being perpetrated on the poor; it is an injustice -- the middle classes, those with private insurance can go to a clean BUPA hospital (I did) but if you are poor and you go to an NHS hospital, you may die of something that should not even be a vague worry and is completely disconnected from whatever took you there in the first place.
It happened on their watch and after they’d spend billions of pounds so, no matter what their story, it is Labour that is responsible for the fact that a lot of people are dying every year in Britain from various hospital super-bugs. And why is this? To be frank, I can’t figure it out. There is no excuse. You have to clean the floors, clean the commodes, change the bed linen, make sure that everyone washes their hands. How difficult is this?
One of those double-speak pundits on a Radio 4 chat show yesterday – a Talking Head sent over by the Labour Party – explained that you couldn’t make these changes immediately if the budget was too small and there wasn’t enough money in the kitty to pay for the extra cleaning.
I’m sorry? What is this about? A budget shortfall is not an excuse in this case: You simply give them the money from somewhere. If the hospital doesn’t have the money, you get it from the central office of the NHS and if they don’t have it, get it from Gordon Brown. Do not make lack of money the reason you kill people from something that is eminently and very cost-effectively prevented!
It is, after all, the by-God National HEALTH Service. It is supposed to take care of people, to make the sick well, isn’t it? It isn’t the National Infection Service! It isn’t the place you go to make people ill, it’s where you go to get better …
I saw a nonsense about a new ‘target’ to reduce C. Difficile by 30% in the next 3 years. What a load of complete and utter verbal fluff, in this case very dangerous fluff. You do not need to wait 3 years to reduce something so easily managed by 30%. Why not simply say you are going to reduce it by 100% in 3 months or, indeed, in a month? Put the institutions on a war footing. Let’s get serious. Put up a lot of signs, give matrons authority and responsibility, install those dispensers of anti-bacterial hand cleaners everywhere. Put in more soap! Encourage patients to help themselves by asking their doctors, nurses and attendants if they’ve washed their hands (with soap!). Follow the cleaners around and make sure they know what they have to do. Show them where the corners are. Explain to them that the underside of a cabinet or a wardrobe is not a black hole but a place to be cleaned! Make sure the commode’s are cleaned, the seats wiped with anti-bacterial cleaners, the floors gleaming and redolent of the smell of that green liquid that that you know shows no mercy towards any bacteria that is unfortunate enough to be in its path. Change the culture! Just do it, for God’s sake! This is a serious crisis people! I do not want to die from a wholly preventable bacterial disease that was contracted in a filthy, stinking ward, in a bed covered with shit-stained sheets, my last memory of a dirty bathroom, drinking from a water glass that hasn’t been cleaned properly, wondering why the ‘professionals’ – every one of them: the doctors, nurses, cleaners – hadn’t had the humanity to wash their hands and give me a chance to recover from whatever it was that put my in the hospital in the first instance but, instead, infected me with a disease that is going to unnecessarily kill me! I do not want this fate to happen to anyone.
But there is another layer of blame and this is even more serious. It’s not just about following the wrong orders which is the somewhat explainable fault of the hospitals (explainable, maybe, but still unjustifiable; there is a moral imperative not to follow wrong orders!) that have been charged with meeting ‘targets’. This is all about a failure of leadership. And this failure is right up there, at the top. Yes, my friends, it’s Gordon’s fault. Previously it was Tony’s fault but Gordon wanted the job and he’s going to have to take the responsibility. Lead on this, Gordon, for God’s sake! For the sake of people who can’t afford private health insurance, for the sake of their humanity and your own, Gordon, you’ve got to lead on this! Give the order today, call up Alan Johnson (or however you spell his name) and simply turn things around, now! I promise this will raise your polls because it often seems that is what matters to you more than anything. I see this morning you are 7 points behind the Tories. Well, if you clean up the NHS that 7 points will be erased and, what’s more, you will, in all likelihood, be saving more Labour than Tory voters’ lives.
If you don’t do this, Gordon, I am going to draw attention to the fact that you look like a mean version of the Pillsbury Dough Boy (you can google him if you don’t know what he looks like). You will not like this!
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