Our MP Rushanara Ali continues to fight in our corner, as her recent Tweet shows,
“@MattHancock can you just sort this! It’s been weeks since I asked for the government to stop the closure of this hospital. Retaining capacity is more important than ever as death toll increases by the day and hospitals struggle to cope with Coronovirus emergency.”
Every hospital bed in the UK needs to be utilised during this unprecedented national crisis. It doesn’t make sense to lose 26 specialist hospital beds and all our expertise in infectious diseases at a time when there is such unrelenting pressure on the NHS.
As NHS acute units and infectious disease wards are being set aside for Covid-19 casualties, so HIV patients are facing an elevated risk, as they are shuttled about within the NHS.
Mildmay Hospital stands ready to do what it can to ease the burden on overstressed NHS hospitals. We have an entirely empty ward with individual patient suites.
We are increasingly concerned about HIV patients who are not being referred to Mildmay for specialist treatment, care and rehabilitation and our Chief Executive Geoff Coleman has written today to Matt Hancock to make these concerns clear to him.
Mildmay Hospital has been around a very long time serving the community and we desperately want to keep doing so. We urgently appeal to the NHS Commissioners to include us in London’s emergency response to #Covid_19.
We also continue to call on the Government and NHS England to step in and ensure the survival of Mildmay by funding it centrally as a specialist service, and to utilise our spare capacity during this unprecedented national emergency.