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Health

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Very little else matters in peoples’ lives more than their health and the health of their loved ones. For this reason the GSD has reserved the greatest financial investment and reform, modernisation and service expansion effort to our health service.

It is easy to forget just how far we have come. Remember the ambulance service manned by shift police officers? Remember the tiny, crammed health centre in Casemates House with just a handful of GPs? Remember the ramshackle, old St Bernard’s hospital? Do you remember our health service with just a handful of doctors and consultants, practically no therapy services and a skeleton nursing service? That’s the Health service we inherited just 15 years ago. Today, as a result of our focused policy it stands transformed as a modern, much safer, European standard health service, offering much wider and greater levels of health care, resulting in lower death rates in our hospital and longer life expectancy in our community. In short, our much improved health service is helping our people to live longer and healthier lives.

So much has been done to bring our health service into the 21st century that it is difficult to summarise it briefly:

• • A new, modern, well equipped hospital

• • A new, expanded health centre, with many more GPs and nurses

• • Number of hospital Consultants more than doubled

• • A new, professional emergency ambulance service

• • A “root and branch” external clinical review of all areas of health service to raise medical standards, safety and establish safe operating protocols

• • Annual health care spending more than quadrupled in 15 years from £ 20m p.a to £80 million per year

• • Many new services now provided locally, including CT Scanning, Dialysis, Ultrasound, Mammography

• • Private practice abolished in our public hospital, resulting in an end to queue jumping for those who could pay!

• • Modern accident and emergency service with doctor present at all times

• • Huge increase in therapy and radiology services

• • Massive improvement in our laboratory services and technology

• • Reform of Sponsored Patients Scheme to increase levels of financial support and eliminate household income from means test

• • Health workers increased from 428 in 1996 to 870 now!

• • Doctors and dentists increased from 33 to 70 now!

• • Nurses increased from 292 to 390 now!

• • Huge increase in staff training and career development opportunities;

• • “Agenda for Change” agreement delivers significant pay and other improvements to staff;

Now, we are building a new mental health hospital and also a specialist Alzeimers’ and dementia sufferers’ residence at the site of the old Naval Hospital, and a Cancer Relief centre and hospice at the old BFBS building. We continue to develop new health screening services, and to improve health care across a broad front. Our health is, and will remain the most important of our domestic policy priorities.