Local MSP Brian Whittle has asked the First Minister when NHS services suspended because of Covid-19 can resume.
When the lockdown began, the NHS paused routine cancer screenings as well as other treatment services such as pain clinics in an effort to reduce the transmission of the virus and free up staff and resources to fight the bug.
Now, as the Scottish Government looks to ease restrictions Scottish Conservative Shadow Health Spokesperson Brian wants to see restoring these services be treated as a priority. The call came after the MSP took part in a virtual meeting of Holyrood’s Cross Party Group on Chronic Pain, in which several sufferers spoke of having to travel to England to get medications because of cancelled clinics. One patient in the group spoke openly about considering suicide.
The suspension of cancer screenings has also seen a worrying drop in cancer diagnoses, with the number of urgent cancer referrals down by around 50%. This has led to fears of more patients getting a later diagnosis and suffering poorer outcomes as a result.
Brian Whittle MSP said:
“The longer services like pain clinics are unavailable, the more physically and mentally challenging the situation becomes for patients.
Pausing some NHS services was the right decision when we were entering lockdown, the risk of people being seriously harmed by the virus was too high. But as the rate of infection declines, it’s important to ask whether the risk of harm from the virus is now outweighed from the harm patients can experience by not having access to these services.
Lockdown was only ever a short-term strategy for driving down the rate of Covid-19 infections. Now the time is right to start putting in place longer term measures to keep infections down while allowing us to begin moving slowly back towards normality.”
