The breakdown of the NHS is no longer a distant threat. Its collapse has already begun.
It started in Antrim Area Hospital on Saturday night when, for what is believed to be the first time here, an emergency department closed its doors. Patients in need of urgent medical treatment were told not to come “in any circumstances” because the situation was “unsafe”.
At the time of its closure, the emergency department had 131 patients. There were no beds available for 66 of them. The chief executive of the Northern trust, which runs the hospital, said that such a situation would have been unthinkable five years ago, but it is now normal.
Other health trusts are regularly experiencing similar problems in terms of overwhelmed emergency departments and insufficient beds to meet the demand for admissions. The situation is likely to become worse as the winter progresses.
A crisis of this magnitude is normally addressed by political leaders developing and implementing a plan of action. The problem is, of course, that there is no one here with the political authority to develop such a strategy.
Health care is the responsibility of Stormont, but it too has collapsed and there are no immediate proposals to re-establish it. During what might be described as a national emergency, we have neither the political mechanism nor the medical facilities to treat our seriously ill.
We need a functioning government to offer direction and leadership. If politicians wish to tackle the problem, they must put aside their differences and reconvene Stormont immediately.
Which do they think is the more important: politics or the lives of our people? Their attitude over the next few days will reveal their answer.
Refusing entry to an emergency department is an obvious sign of the health system’s collapse. However there is an equally serious, but more hidden, problem in hospital waiting lists.
Almost 400,000 people are waiting for a first appointment with a consultant and the number of people here waiting more than a month to start cancer treatment is five times higher than a decade ago.
The health system is now clearly broken. If our political parties have any compassion, they will come together to tackle the problems which have arisen under their governance.
Finger pointing at someone else is no longer an option.
