‘IF THEY get rid of 600 beds and so many staff, 8,000 jobs in all – what a disaster! That would be the end of the hospitals in this area,’ exclaimed Comfort Anifalaje, an RCN nurse working at Ealing Hospital yesterday morning.
She was speaking at the mass picket of Ealing Hospital called to re-open maternity and to re-open the Charlie Chaplin children’s ward and to stop the closure of the A&E.
Anifalaje continued: ‘This Tory government is in power, you cannot convince them, you cannot change their mind, they want to cut jobs in the NHS. This is their plan. If everyone comes out on strike together we can beat them, we can bring them down.’
The cuts are laid out in the Sustainability and Transformation Plans (STPs) for north west London hospitals. They plan to cut 600 beds and close A&Es, cut 8,000 jobs and cut 50,000 planned hospital admissions. This would end Ealing as a District General Hospital.
‘Stop the closure of Ealing Hospital! Trade unions must act now!’ rang out on the megaphone as the mass picket won big support from passing motorists and passers-by. The pickets gave out leaflets for the All Trade Union Alliance (ATUA) conference on Saturday February 11 and hospital workers stopped to buy tickets.
A passing ambulance blasted its horn in support as it passed and then a quarter of an hour later three ambulance workers came to support the picket. Another nurse working at Ealing, Rani Sebastian said: ‘We need to maintain our jobs! Local people are finding it so difficult to travel all the way to Hillingdon Hospital or Northwick Park Hospital. That is why our A&E here at Ealing must stay open.’
RCN nurse at Ealing, Georgina Appiah told News Line: ‘Student nurses’ bursaries are so important. Most of us relied on the bursary. We could not have afforded the university tuition fees without a bursary. Now they have got rid of the nurses’ bursaries, the applications to become student nurses are down by 23%. This will affect the future of nursing.
‘They shut the maternity services here at Ealing. When a woman suffers complications and needs C-section (caesarean) both the baby’s and the mother’s lives are at stake.
‘You have minutes to save their lives and it can take half an hour to get to Northwick Park. Lives will be lost! If mothers and children die, it will affect the reproduction of the next generation.’
