Letters: If not for our NHS, I would be dead

The following letters appear in the 30th November edition of the Independent

A Save Our NHS demonstration outside the Conservative Party conference in Manchester in October (Corbis)

The NHS deserves much more thanks that it gets. Last month, my husband and I were given the news that all pregnant couples dread. At a routine antenatal appointment, it was detected that our much-loved and much-wanted baby was very seriously poorly.

We were guided through more scans, tests and MRIs by a compassionate and skilled team of midwives, sonographers, consultant obstetricians and neurosurgeons. But they only confirmed our worst fears; our precious baby would not survive and there was no science or treatment that could change that. And to take the pregnancy further could directly impact on my life.

We are still in the darkness of our grief. But I do remember the endless support we received throughout the challenges of birth from staff, family and friends. My placenta didn’t deliver, so while I had precious time holding my daughter, I received emergency interventions to stop the bleeding. I later needed to go to the operating theatre to complete the delivery under a general anaesthetic with intravenous antibiotics to prevent infection.

I do not have the words to express our loss. However, I am conscious of the things we must remain grateful for, especially with the awareness of how many women suffer in childbirth over the world. Countries such as South Sudan have a devastatingly high maternal death rate, with an estimated one in 50 women dying due to pregnancy.

When I worked there (for Médecins Sans Frontières) I saw first-hand that except for aid agencies there were no hospitals, trained midwives and doctors, quality antibiotics or safe blood transfusions. There was no hope of seeking help when the worst-case-scenario happened, as it did for me.

In just one week, the NHS saved my life in no fewer than four different ways. For that I remain in a sense of gratitude. Although the staff were not giving us the news we wanted, their knowledge and skills stopped my pregnancy becoming my death sentence. We also received specialist midwife bereavement support, guidance from the multi-faith chaplaincy and help to arrange our daughter’s funeral in those first hours when our world had seemed to implode.

My husband and I are slowly picking up the pieces. But I am alive, I am recovering with the help of those around us, and I know we gave all we could to our daughter in her short life. For all those involved, thank you.

Anna Kent Alam

Hinstock, Shropshire

After months of bullying tactics the Government has agreed to meet junior doctors to discuss contract reforms via Acas. However, the doctors have not immediately withdrawn their plans to strike.

Why? Mr Hunt, who is not actually attending the talks, has maintained his threat that he will impose contract reforms anyway should talks fail.

If this contract is imposed, it will change the way doctors work and are paid, and the way patients are cared for forever. Patients will be cared for by overworked and unsafe clinicians. Doctors will leave the NHS and future intakes of medical students will no longer be the brightest and most hard-working students – anyone with a brain will have been very much put off medicine.

Doctors are justified in continuing with plans to strike until either a deal can be reached or the Government drops its threat of imposition; and if we, the public, want to have an NHS that continues to offer excellent value for money, state-of-the-art treatments and high productivity, we should all actively support our doctors.

Jonathan Barnes

London N4

No wonder the NHS is so short of money. The MRI scanner in our local hospital is owned by a private company. The NHS pays the owner every time someone uses the scanner.

The local NHS Trust has said in the past financial year the scanner was used nearly 8,500 times. A doctor told me each scan costs at least £110. Annually about £935,000 is going out of NHS hands into private hands just with this one piece of equipment. The trust has said that a new scanner would cost £790,000 plus VAT.

We are paying almost as much as a new scanner would cost every year to this company. What other important pieces of NHS equipment are under similar arrangements?

Nigel F Boddy

Darlington, County Durham

Attack on Corbyn disappointing

Your editorial “Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour isn’t working” (28 November) is disappointing to those who sensed The Independent might be moving progressively leftwards. Witness the extraordinary language: “shambolic management”; Corbyn described as “isolated, impotent, weak”; “feeble representation”; a “crumbling” Labour Party... To a committed Labour member, this is fiction and could be straight out of the Mail/Telegraph stable.

What is becoming clear is that all of Britain’s mainstream media is complicit in an unofficial Establishment offensive – wittingly or otherwise – to destroy any possibility of real change.

Dr Richard House

Stroud, Gloucestershire

In the past few weeks Labour MPs have been fighting hard against each other and their own elected leader. Now they are preparing to send other people to fight Isis on our behalf. Who knows? Perhaps one day Labour MPs will even summon up the courage and unity to fight the Tories?

Chris Webster

Abergavenny

There are better tactics than bombing

Simply sending two or three Tornados into the already overcrowded skies over Syria is a pointless exercise. Surely it would be far preferable for the UK to overtly embed its special forces and advisors with Peshmerga and any other elements in Syria that our intelligence services know are opposing Isis to assist them in their fight. Yes, it’s “boots on the ground”, but far more would be achieved by advice, state-of-the-art communications and intelligence to help those doing 99 per cent of the fighting and dying.

Bob Fennell

Bromley, Greater London

We mock Isis for its medieval perception of “an eye for an eye”, then we practise our own version of it, with a bomb for a bomb.

Cameron’s logic of divide-and conquer-violence, like Blair, Bush, Reagan, and Thatcher before him, is the moral equivalent of self-harming in a globalised interconnected world.

Sarah J Lloyd

St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex

We have not yet done anywhere near enough to stop the supply of arms to Isis or to cut off its ability to sell the oil which finances it. Why not impose sanctions on those supplying arms and purchasing oil? Only when we have tried this, will we be able to say we have tried everything and war is now the last resort.

Jehangir Sarosh

Bushey, Hertfordshire

Bombing kills innocent people and absolves the politicians, sitting safely at home, from more intelligent moves to solve conflict. It’s time to move out of the dark ages to more enlightened ways of achieving foreign policy aims.

Stephen Goldby

Wilmslow, Cheshire

Will David Cameron’s 70,000 moderate opposition troops be ready for deployment in 45 minutes?

Clive Butcher

Mansfield, Nottinghamshire

When we hold our inquiry into the 2015-2020 Syrian war debacle, can we please hire someone who works faster than Chilcot?

Barry Tighe

Woodford Green, Greater London

We are all paying for the deficit

A few days before the Autumn Statement, I received my tax statement from HMRC. It shows my total tax paid for 2013/2014, breaking it down into 15 categories, from highest amount to lowest.

I was surprised to see that the amount to pay interest on the UK deficit is the sixth-highest amount and five per cent of my tax bill. This will be the same for millions of other taxpayers. Imagine what we could do with this money if we did not have to spend it on interest. No politician has ever got everything right, and Osborne is no exception, but getting rid of the deficit would transform our finances, and the sooner the better. By the way, the smallest amount, at just over 0.5 per cent, was our contribution to the EU.

Colin McPhie

Croftinloan, Perthshire

Scottish TV cut is cultural vandalism

In the Autumn Statement’s small print was the scrapping of Government funding for BBC Alba, the Gaelic television channel. This means BBC Alba will become entirely reliant on the BBC and the Scottish Government. The decision is cultural vandalism. This TV station serves 700,000 people.

Scotland’s TV licence-payers pay in £335m every year but just £35m is spent on Scottish TV production. This misguided plan, detrimental to the development of the language and the creative sector, should be abandoned.

Alex Orr

Edinburgh