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BMJ 2002;325:6 ( 6 July )

News

Politicians must stop exploiting patients

Lynn Eaton, London

Politicians and the media should stop using patients to score party political points. That was the message from the BMA chairman, Dr Ian Bogle, in his opening speech to this year's annual representative meeting, held in Harrogate this week, in which he described the NHS as having become "the Punch and Judy show of British politics."

He cited the case of Rose Addis, the 94 year old woman who hit the headlines earlier this year after her family made allegations of poor standards of emergency care at a London hospital.

"No one emerged from this unsavoury and unseemly episode with any creditnot the media, not the family, and least of all the politicians whose shameless exploitation of this poor woman and her relatives for political gain was unworthy of their office," he said.

"Is it too much to ask that politicians stop playing politics with the NHS?

Doctors would not then be a pawn in anyone's political game, he said. "Doctors won't be the dog the government kicks when things don't go quite according to plan."

The BMA wanted to achieve a better health service for patients and a better working environment for doctors, he said. And the BMA would continue to expose the government when it attempted to conceal its own failings and inadequacies with "spin, fudge, and double counting."

He welcomed the chancellor's Budget announcement in March of extra cash for the NHS as a "defining moment," then went on to describe Tory health ministers as "the prophets of doom" for their response to the cash injection.

"I think I have discovered a new disease," he said. "I've called it collective Conservative amnesiaor Fox's syndrome."

"That is the only explanation I can find for why Liam Fox and his friends on the opposition front bench have wiped from their memories the damage they wreaked during their 18 year stewardship of the health service."

(Credit: PETER JORDAN/PA)   Rose Addis's daughter and grandson, who sold the story to London's Evening Standard

© BMJ 2002
 

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