It's something that's painful and infuriating to me in my own experience, and thus something I feel very strongly about: people getting denied tests and treatment because of long line-ups of patients and limited resources. It happens all the time in countries where healthcare is public, though we don't always hear about it. But here's one instance where we do: thousands of women are being denied breast exams in Oxfordshire, UK, because of staffing shortages. Women there between 50 and 70 are rightly entitles to a screening every 6 months but the NHS can't keep up with the demand and is turning women away. This has outraged cancer specialists and survivors, though they can't do much about it at this point.
Say what you will about the importance of public healthcare, but when things like this are happening, it should be a rather large indicator that it's just not working. My dad couldn't get screened for cancer until a couple of weeks before he passed away, and by then, obviously, it was too late.
1. This is really a problem that stems from the lack of funding for cancer clinics and even more so for cancer research. This is why ordinary people, particularly women and cancer specialists are rallying for more funding to be provided by governments. It is a fact that because of additional funding in the past, the number of cancer patients that have won over the disease have increased from half to two-thirds since the 1970s. Read more about it here: http://www.thenewsroom.com/details/362768/Health?c_id=wom-bc-ar
- Alvin from The Health Desk at TheNewsRoom.com
Posted at 8:03AM on Jun 20th 2007 by alvinwriter