Posts Tagged → NHS
The Problems We’ve Never Gotten Round to Fixing
Congratulations on surviving the first decade of the millenium and oh what an amazing decade it has been for healthcare, we have seen the advent of a slew of drugs including statins (lipitor) which have lowered our cholesterol, given us hard-ons that last longer than hangovers from the night before(viagra) and breath easier (the new generation of once a day asthma meds). We’ve also managed to make advances in medical imaging that have made it such that any cancer any where can be detected far earlier than ever before thanks to the wide spread distribution of PET and SPECT scanning and yet there’s still one aspect of healthcare that we have continued to fail epically at no matter how much is spent on it.
And (surprisingly) it’s not exclusive to Kuwait. I’ve seen it in hospitals in the UK, the States and even Thailand and Germany, infact I’ve yet to see any hospital find a way of fixing it……… the food sucks balls ……..
Lloyd Grossman ….. if he can’t do it no one can ……The man plays guitar, dresses like Steve Jobs and cooks!
You go to any hospital anywhere and try the food there ….. it always tastes like cardboard wrapped in turd sprinkled lightly with rabbit droppings ……..
and it’s worse ….. it CAN’T BE FIXED, 3 different chefs and fifty million pounds in the UK tried to fix the problem at NHS hospitals(Yes, the list includes Lloyd Grossman of Spaghetti Sauce fame) and gave up halfway through the 5 year program.
What’s even worse is the the food not only tastes like puke from last nights party but is also far worse for you, in two different surveys of hospital food 18 of the 21 NHS hospitals tested were found to have food had too much salt, too much fat and not much of anything else. Infact, 86 per cent of meals contained too much salt, 67 per cent too much saturated fat and 52 per cent too much fat according to Food Standard Agency guidelines.
Oh and don’t you go calling it prison food ….. it’s far worse ……. Dr. Edwards (Bournemouth University, NHS Food Services Czar ….. yes, they had to employ one things were so bad) did a side by side comparison and found that prison food is far more nutritious and is made in a far cleaner environment than anything served in any NHS hospital…….
Infact since the advent of this millenium (2000) 2,600 people have died of malnutrition in UK hospitals (I’ll be quick to point out that alot may have died because they simply can’t digest the food from extensive surgery or other malabsoprtion problems, but still I’m pretty sure that bad food plays a role) and although we can’t make the same claim in Kuwait, I think it’s because we simply don’t have the statistics.
Our problem in Kuwait is probably that nutritionists and dietitians aren’t given the freedom required to change/fix things after all if you look at places like Dietcare, Nutrition and Care and other places, their food is edible (albeit quiet pricey) but quiet healthy.
So perhaps we should add better food to the list along with a cure for cancer, AIDS and a flying car …………
Have a good year everyone ………
Curing Cancer….. Yes it is worth it ……
Apologies …… I’m actually going to try and argue out a serious point here ….. and yes, I am well aware that the fine people who run Q8Health could probably do a better job at this sort of thing* (serious medical stuff …. involving educated arguments, etc.)….. I just thought I’d give it a go anyway …..
We’ve all been touched by cancer. We all know what it feels like and are well aware that there is never a happy ending, only some comfort in the fact that a person is eventually cured. We also know that the ministry spends alot of money ….. far more than most other government institutions and rarely has to face cutbacks despite under-performance year in and year-out; not to mention the fact that we’ve become one of German Healthcares’ top ten sources of income and have spent so much at The London Clinic we practically own the damn thing.
So when someone finds a vaccine for cervical cancer (fifth most deadly cancer in women worldwide) . (the cervix is the front part of the uterus…….. it’s kind of like the bumper ….) you’d expect our people to be all over it (if only so that Dar Al Shifa, Royal Hayat and the other ones can fill their coffers).
And just so we’re clear we’re not talking about some vaccine based on sharks cartilage, Chinese herbs or chanting like some Sherpa, we’re talking about a 3 – shot vaccine (sorry girls …. it’s either 3 needles or cancer ….. you just have to tough it out I’m afraid). And the best part is that it actually does work and has undergone numerous clinical trials (with practically no side effects).
A Specimen of a uterus and cervix …. the big ball is the cancer … well a tumor … it may not be cancer … but it does look like it.
The drug itself (known as Gardasil) doesn’t actually kill cancer cells, instead it provides women with immunity against the leading cause of the cancer (the human papilloma virus). The virus is in most of the male and female population by their late teens (in most countries) and is also the leading cause of genital warts (the things that stick out like skin tags …. commonly present as anal warts in our 16-20 female population …. I wonder why …. ). At the moment it’s only approved for 12-16 year old girls who are not sexually active and have therefor yet to be exposed to the virus but is probably safe for the general population.
At a time when our healthcare budget is about 962 million and we spend well over 100 million KD trying to give people a summer vacation in Germany while some distant relative gets his tooth taken out, surely we can afford to spend a couple of million instigating what could be a landmark campaign against cancer. For one thing the drug itself doesn’t cost all that much (about 300-500 dollars per person …. which isn’t alot for a cancer cure …. if it were me I’d charge you bastards at least 2 grand a piece ….. and yes, that is in KD) and our population isn’t all the big. Then there’s the fact that we have a department in every hospital specifically assigned to giving out vaccines (It’s the public call it Preventive Medicine …… we call it medical nirvana …. no sick leave, no fights, no sick patients and no dead people).
So using the numbers from the CIA world factbook (apparently we have a population of 2,596,799 (including expats and those of us who aren’t fortunate enough to have full citizenship) and a below 14 female population of 338,634) which when multiplied by the cost of the vaccine (500 dollars) and a 30% markup the local drug dealers (= people who have distribution rights in the country and tend to peg the prices according to arbitrary numbers their kids dialed on their mobile phones) would amount to a grand total of about $220,112,100 and sure 220 million dollars (64,399,298.03 KD) is alot but it’s only a 6.7 percent increase in our total healthcare budget for this year (2009-2010) and would make sense economically since the cost to treat cervical cancer in Kuwait is astronomical (everybody wants to go to Germany or the States and those who don’t end up having to wait for aaaages to get any treatment)
It would also do our side (I can’t believe I just referred to the ministry of health as “our side” … ugh ….. ) a world of good in terms of publicity (especially after that video with the babies head pulled off …. and yes, from what I’ve heard it was a still birth ….. just steer clear of a romanian midwafe at Jahrah … just incase … ) if they were one of the first middle eastern countries to “cure” cervical cancer (it’d be like the good old days …… before leopard hijabes, annoying stickers and idiots who over do it with the hair straightener ….. the fuckwits).
However as with any form of progress and any ideas which actually involve thinking and enthusiasm it’ll probably never see the light of day ….. we still don’t have it available in the damn country …… oh well …….
At least people in the U.K. might get lucky ……..
* No, I’m not being sarcastic, I actually think that you’re one of the very few places on the internet where public healthcare reform in Kuwait is actually being discussed in a correct and mature manner.
We’ll scream at you, give you the wrong meds and maybe even beat you to a pulp ….. but we’ll never rape ya …..
Apologies everyone, I’ve been taking a little break from everything. You see after the erm …. “incident” I’ve decided to strom out of work and have spent the past couple of days watching weeds and playing Gears of War 2 while catching up with my reading ……. Anyway here’s another morbidly distrubing post for all of you to enjoy …….
Our noble profession has recently sunk to a new low and surprisingly this hasn’t been as a result of the hard work (or lack there of) of my collegues here in Kuwait. For the first time in a long time I’ve found another healthcare provider to gripe about, another set of administrators, doctors and ward attendants to prove how dumb/bad/just plain wrong (in the Hannibal Lecter sense) doctors/nurses are.
The british healthcare system (the NHS) was once known for being robust, reliable and efficient, during the 80′s however it did go into s slump (Thatcher blamed the immigrants for the most part) and since then has gone on to try and rectify things.
For the most part they have improved remarkably over the past 2 decades, GP’s actually diagnose people, surgeons try their best to look out for their patients interest rather than just slice and dice and emergencies are dealt with within minutes rather than the 8+ hours US medicare and Medicaid is now famous for and the complete lack of urgency our boys seem to practice like a goddamn national sport.
However as with any corpration, group of people or football soccer football soccer team there’s always the one person who ends up fucking a sheep and giving everybody else a bad name (for boxing it was Mike Tyson, for us it was Bin Laden and his crew and in the case of the music industry it was Britney Spears) and the NHS is no exception.
Over the past few months over 30 different cases of sexual assault on patients have been reported and although they were initially isolated to psychiatric centers (and were therefor ignored by the higher ups) they have recently also been reported on general medical wards. The worst part is that it seems to be happening to patients who are heavily sedated or too sick to do anything about it and the person(s) involed were for the most part fired and set free without enduring any legal penalties, this was mostly because there wasn’t enough evidence to convict them (the smart bastards)
So the next time you find yourself pissed of with that MRI appointment booked for next year or that fucked up nurse that bruised you while taking your blood just remember thing could be worse …….
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