Today the Liverpool Women’s Hospital digs the first turf to mark the start of the new, much needed NeoNatal Unit This investment of £15 million is the way  that we want to see Liverpool  Women’s Hospital grow and thrive.

February 2019. Save Liverpool Women’s Hospital is still campaigning for a fully funded Liverpool Women’s Hospital, for the NHS, for all our mothers, sisters, daughters, friends, and lovers, and for the babies. We campaign with the public and with trade unions, women’s organizations and pensioners to challenge the people with the power to make these decisions. The real decision makers are the Government, their friends in the multinational health care companies, and their local appointees. In reality, an ordinary doctor or nurse has little say., and few approve of what’s happening to the NHS.

Despite underfunding, Liverpool Women’s Hospital, and the NHS work wonders. The day to day caring work of NHS staff continues, under pressure, and meanwhile, these battles are fought out in boardrooms, with big companies and international politics. There are very real dangers ahead for staff and patients.

We want LWH to be upgraded on site with full cooperation with all local and regional hospitals. We want bloods, diagnostics and imaging all upgraded. We want parent accommodation for the neonates. We want the hospital to go on caring for Liverpool people. This campaign offers solidarity to people trying to improve working conditions in the hospital.

We want the money from the government as much as the Board does but not for the same purpose

We have consulted a leading obstetrician and a team of health workers in different professions, about our objections. Some of our activists fought and lost to stop the PFI at the Royal., which was as passionately supported by the Board at the Royal as this ” move” is supported at the Liverpool Women’s hospital. Doctors are not trained in health economics, nor are they infallible. The doctors and managers who supported PFI were very fallible about the Royal

Tectonic plates are moving in the NHS. Different types of privatization are fighting over the NHS, which continues to be underfunded and the staff overworked.

Good health care is an investment that repays the money paid by the country three times over.

Back to basics

The NHS model was designed to provide all the treatments needed, for all the people, and not for profit.  This model is the  most efficient and the most cost-effective, focusing the maximum money on the patient and the least on profit and admin

The UK can well afford a good health service. Funding to western European levels would easily sort the NHS problems.

Bad health care is expensive and wasteful, to the country as a whole, and bad for the individual and bad for their families.

Women fought for decades to establish a health service, and that campaign started in Liverpool. For 70 years, everyone has benefitted from women who persisted.

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The current part-privatized NHS model spends money on financial consultants and private profit, money that should go to treating patients.

Liverpool Women’s Hospital is in the midst of (often-chaotic) change in the NHS.

There has been significantly more privatization since the Health and Social Care Act. This gave parcelled up services to private companies to run under the NHS label. Now the model of privatization is changing. Local commissioning is going. CCGs are merging.  Hospitals are being closed or merging.

The internal market is now challenged as wasteful. The model of Foundation Trusts is being criticized.  Instead, the NHS is being divided into 44 Accountable care services. These services must work within a set budget so rationing is required. The treatment might be needed but it will not necessarily be given, and admin rather than doctors will say yes or no to treatment like an insurance company does. This is being brought in, gradually across the country.

How to boil a frog. If you put a frog in boiling water, it jumps out. If you put it in tepid water and heat the water up the frog does not know it is being boiled, it sits and cooks.  So privatization is done on the sly.

 Capital Spend

The NHS needs money for day to day services, (revenue) and capital spend, money to build new hospitals, NHS capital spending was squandered by the PFI scandals that built flawed hospitals and charged way above the cost of the build, and are still raking it in. Liverpool Royal is just the worst of the scandals. The new Royal will now be completed without a PFI! The money will come from the government directly. PFI( and it’s variations with different initials ) is now disgraced, and not available for the move favoured by the management at LWH. (See pages page 177 to 179 of the pre-consultation business case for their earlier

Huge public health hazards like the toxic diesel particulates that accumulate in the placenta, cannot be ignored. The health campus, with major corporations, on the Royal site, is highly questionable for pregnant women and babies.

Our campaign wants to keep a women’s hospital, on site. We think this site is safer and we think a focus on women’s health is essential.