Saturday, June 11, 2005

THE SCOURGE OF PRIVATIZATION Independent: "Potentially lethal infections by hospital superbugs are soaring among children, scientists have warned. Severe shortages of specialist nurses and infection-control staff are adding to rising rates of the bugs among babies and children, research indicates. The Independent revealed this week that 12 people have died and more than 300 others have been infected by an outbreak of a new strain of the diarrhoeal infection Clostridium difficile at Stoke Mandeville Hospital in Buckinghamshire." George Galloway: "When we privatized the cleaning services in hospitals, we immediately passed on to companies a duty not primarily to keep the hospitals clean, but primarily to make a profit for their shareholders. The result has been an explosion, a veritable explosion, in re-infection rates; so-called MRSA which is a kind of super bug mutant, which is actually killing 10,000 people a year in Britain. And there are many hospitals, including the one in my own constituency, miscalled the Royal London Hospital, though you'd never find a member of the royal family in it, I can assure you, where you're as likely to come out sick as you are to come out cured because of the state of the cleaning services in the hospitals. And that's directly linked to the privatization of that service." The same is happening in Europe and the rest of the world where privatization has taken place. CUPE: "To maximize profits, private contractors reduce cleaning standards, scrimp on materials like disinfectant, hire less staff, pay poor wages, and offer workers little training and no benefits. In hospitals, where cleaning services are contracted out, the quality of cleaning is also adversely affected by staff shortages and high staff turnover rates." Unison: "The 'market' halved the number of cleaners, cut their pay and conditions, and standards plummeted. Now, spiralling hospital acquired infections cost the NHS more than £1 billion and at least 5,000 lives a year." 10:52:39 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2005 Hetty Litjens.