Charging those with uncertain immigration status for NHS services was introduced as part of Theresa May’s ‘hostile environment’. Non-payment of bills can result in being reported to the Home Office and used as a reason for not being granted settled status. This system remains in place during the Covid-19 pandemic, actively discouraging health care seeking […]
Author: rachelhallamy
Communications team @ Doctors in Unite
As a paediatrician, I share the grave concerns of nurse Ian Wilson who has two children at school in Lewisham and experience of working with covid-19 infected patients. In an open letter to Health Secretary Matt Hancock last week, he pleaded that we were not enrolled against our will in a giant experiment that could […]
Richard Horton, respected editor of the medical journal ‘the Lancet’, aptly summed up the current pandemic in the following words: “Coronavirus is the greatest global science policy failure in a generation. Austerity blunted the ambition and commitment of government to protect its people. The objective was to diminish the size and role of the state. […]
Like many people in the UK, I live in a house of multiple occupation (HMO). We make an improvised family of five. Three of us work in the NHS: one junior doctor on a geriatric ward, one junior doctor on a psychiatric dementia ward (me) and one working in administration. The other two are finishing […]
In response to Covid-19, Doctors in Unite urges the government to:
• Extend day-one sick pay to those on zero hours contracts, in the “gig-economy” and self-employed members of society
• Ensure that workers are not under pressure to attend work while they are unwell and may inadvertently pass on the disease: both financially and in regards to staffing.
• Allow the NHS to requisite private health care facilities to accommodate effective Covid-19 treatment and quarantine provision if needed
Doctors in Unite 