'Hoping for a Christmas miracle': Children waiting months for life-saving procedures as all NHS beds full
Featured in LBC latest article, the CHF chief executive spoke in relation to critically ill children waiting up to eight weeks for life-saving procedures because there’s no space in the NHS.
The chief executive of the Children’s Heart Federation, Rajwant Kaur Singh, told LBC situations like Fatima’s are “devastating”.
She said she didn’t believe a sudden drop in the donor pool or cuts to the NHS have caused them but has been warning for some time that the system for children is stretched and more ‘Berlin Heart’ beds are needed to avoid situations like this continuously happening.
“Unfortunately, we’re hearing only increasingly about the children we support and their families falling victim to pressures and bottlenecks in what we know is an already stretched system, which shouldn’t be the reason any patient doesn’t receive the care that they need. It’s really harrowing.
“Absolutely (we need more beds across the UK). It’s a small specialty which we recognise provides the required expertise and precise knowledge and training, but despite that within our community the population is significant. Heart conditions are the most common defect present at birth in the UK so we are a significant community even though we’re often forgotten. But circumstances and cases like this definitely prove time and time again there is that need.
“CHF have been campaigning directly for the NHS to carry out a full review of paediatric cardiothoracic transplant services to address particularly the inequity between the approaches of the adult and paediatric service. It is something that we’ve been actively pursuing for a while.”
