Michael Walsh, a shoulder surgeon, has been sacked by Spire Healthcare and accused of subjecting scores of patients to unnecessary operations that left many in pain, traumatised and unable to work. This is a depressingly familiar story, with echoes of the case of Ian Paterson, the rogue breast surgeon who also worked for Spire. Paterson […]
Category: Government Policy
Life expectancy is falling for the first time in over a century, driven by growing social inequality and a decade of ideological Conservative austerity. Sir Michael Marmot, the director of University College London’s Health Equity Institute, specifically cited government policy as a driver of worsening health and shorter lives for people in the UK. “England […]
Wuhan Novel Coronavirus (CoVid-19) has claimed over 1,300 lives and infected 60,000 worldwide so far, with no sign of slowing down. The NHS has become an increasingly fragmented service supplied by multiple providers, which is at risk of failing to deliver the co-ordinated, effective response that Coronavirus requires. The last potential pandemic the NHS responded […]
In the late 1980s our union first published proposals for a citizen’s income – what we would now call universal basic income. This was long before the idea became fashionable. Our proposal was simple – we would give an income of two thirds the average GDP per person to everyone, so long as they contributed […]
The Doctors in Unite conference focussed its attention on the destructive effect of alcohol this year, and committed to making tackling alcohol harm its key priority for 2020. There are over 80 alcohol related deaths each day in the UK, and over a million hospital admissions a year are associated with alcohol use. In England, […]
The chair of Doctors in Unite has called her union to action in the face of the calamitous 2019 general election result. Dr Jackie Applebee said she was “horrified” by the outcome. “We cannot sit back and wait for the next general election in five years, before campaigning on issues that affect the people’s health” […]
The UK’s oldest medical trade union is affiliating with the human rights organisation Liberty. Both groups fight for people’s rights and freedoms, hold the powerful to account, and challenge those who abuse their authority. Doctors in Unite and Liberty stand together against the home office’s discredited ‘hostile environment’ policy, where immigration enforcement can access personal […]
Doctors in Unite 