Downing Street has said that the government is doing “everything possible” to increase the number of beds available amid concerns about pressure on the NHS. The Prime Minister’s official spokesperson told reporters: “The NHS is already maximizing its number of beds, so the equivalent of 7,000 additional beds, plus funding for discharges and increasing virtual wards. That’s all to free up capacity. Again, that’s all thanks to the extra funding, the billions of extra pounds we’ve put in.
“We are doing everything possible to increase the number of beds.”
Meanwhile Peter Neville, a gastroenterologist who works in Wales, warned The NHS is on the verge of collapse as a result of rocketing demand, a consultant has claimed, while a man revealed he had been forced to wait nine hours for an ambulance.
Mr Neville set out his concerns in a lengthy series of tweets in which he addressed the recent nursing strikes over pay.
He said: “They know that if the government wins this, nursing will collapse anyway. The junior doctors are militant. A strike vote very soon. This is about money. But it is also about working conditions. Because if conditions do not improve , the NHS will fall. The staff have had enough.”
Darrel Wilson urged people who need critical care to “get a taxi” rather than dial 999 after his harrowing experience. The 54-year-old, from Stoke, called for an ambulance at 10.20pm on October 8 last year because of chest pains – but paramedics didn’t arrive until 07.46am the next morning – 81 minutes after he had been driven to A&E by his wife Debbie, 57.
Darrel, a JCB worker, said: “The nurses have said that if I had waited any longer for the ambulance, I wouldn’t have a stent and I wouldn’t be alive.”
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