How NHS can recover from pandemic – Yorkshire Post Letters

FRONTline doctors have very real concerns about the indirect and long-term impact of the pandemic on their patients’ health and on their own wellbeing (The Yorkshire Post, April 28).

Owing to more than a decade of underfunding, our NHS went into the pandemic short on staff, short on capacity and short on resources.

Doctors and other healthcare workers are tired and exhausted and they must be given adequate time to rest and recuperate to avoid burnout. Many will need timely and ongoing support from psychological and occupational health services which can be a challenge in many areas. We need a commitment from health leaders that we will be given the support needed to deal with the backlog.

Patients need assuring that the NHS is still open, and that they can count on us to provide them with the care and treatment they need, but government and local health care providers must be honest with the public about the need for a realistic approach to doing this.

We urgently need our local health leaders to work with frontline staff to lay out their plans for how we can move forwards to protect the welfare of health workers and give patients the life changing and life preserving treatments they need and minimise further deaths due to excessive waits.

From: Hilary Andrews, Leeds.

ISN’T it a shame that Labour spends all its time attacking the Government instead of getting on with developing policies?

Their latest support of Dominic Cummings is laughable when you look back at what they had to say about his trip to Barnard Castle in the middle of the first Covid lockdown. Sir Keir Starmer certainly isn’t a potential Prime Minister on present standing. Boris Johnson, with all his many faults, gets things done.

From: Bob Watson, Baildon.

WE are still fighting a worldwide pandemic and the consequent economic disaster. Please can Boris Johnson, Sir Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves, Dominic Cummings and others all shut up, leave the trivia alone, and simply get on with the hugely important and difficult job in hand.

From: Sam Willmott, Bingley.

WOULD it be possible – just once – for the mean-spirited Sir Keir Starmer to acknowledge the success of the Covid vaccination programme? It would not be as advanced if his party was running the country.

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