The Down Community Health Committee has called a public meeting to update local people on health developments
Eamonn McGrady, Chair of the Down Community Health Committee, has called an open meeting to discuss a number of key issues impacting the health of people in the east and mid-Down areas.
The meeting will be held in Denvir’s Hotel, English Street, Downpatrick at 7.30pm on Thursday 26th October 2023.
The aim of the meeting is to bring people up-to-date with their key health issues in relation to the delivery of health services.
Mr McGrady said: “We will be discussing:
- the current political landscape in relation to the NHS and the Downe Hospital.
- the current state of service provision for our area,
- and what our health expectations are.
“It was Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS who said , ‘[the NHS] will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it.’
“It is essential that as many people as possible attend on the night. So please encourage as many people as possible to come along and join us.
“Every is very welcome.”
“No society can legitimately call itself civilised if a sick person is denied medical aid because of a lack of means’ (Aneurin Bevin.)
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The NHS was founded in 1948 under a Labour government promising a comprehensive health service available to all. It was based on a person’s clinical need and not their ability to pay for the medical services.
It is an organisation that has over the decades aspired to the highest professional standards.
The patient is the central theme in the NHS, it’s reason for existence. The patient is at the beating heart of it.
The above principles are what our forefathers (and mothers) aspired to, and it’s what we wish today for our future generations.
It was on the 5th July 1948 that the NHS was born. Nevin described this historic moment as ‘a great and novel undertaking’.
There have been huge advances in medicine since 1948 but today the debate rages… is the patient safer now in the old NHS which treated everyone as equal, or are there differences now in the NHS which don’t treat everyone the same as was the original principle of the NHS ? Are we now in a two-tier society of losers and winners in health ?
Modernisation, professionalism and medical specialism have all created great advances for the NHA but also have created problems which must be addressed to bring us back to the original principles of the NHS. The challenge now is how to square the circle 75 years on.
Local health trusts and the Department of Health itself may have gained bureaucratic momentum tugging at the principles of the NHS, but we cannot now throw the NHS baby out with the bathwater in the name of ‘a modern health service’.
Please attend the meeting:
Denvir’s Hotel,
English Street,
Downpatrick,
at 7.30pm
on Thursday 26th October 2023.
