23Oct
Minister for Public Health Shona Robison welcomed an investment of up to £1.5 million for Dundee that will boost the heart health of the city’s people. Shona visited Erskine Medical Practice to find out more about Hearty Lives Dundee, the flagship programme being delivered in partnership by British Heart Foundation Scotland and NHS Tayside.
Hearty Lives Dundee extend health checks ot 40-44 yer olds enabling an additional 4,500 to receive a health check. The scheme is part of BHF Scotland’s £1.5m boost to heart health in the city.
Shona said: “The Scottish Government has been working closely with BHF Scotland in developing our Hearth Disease and Stroke Action Plan and I’m really keen to continue working with them to take forward the wide range of actions we’ve identified, including our focus on reducing health inequalities.
“Hearty Lives Dundee will reach thousands of people who might not otherwise have access to health checks and will identify clinical risk factors for heart disease and other potentially life-changing illnesses and prevent premature deaths.”
05Oct
Dundee MSPs Shona Robison and Joe FitzPatrick said today it was ‘no surprise’ that 68% of calls to the emergency services between Friday night and Sunday morning are alcohol related. The Dundee duo recently spent a Friday night – Saturday morning night shift with emergency services’ staff, including a stint with a paramedic crew and saw the problems for themselves.
The figures were released on the first day of Alcohol Awareness week.
Shona Robison said: “Being on the night-shift exercise with frontline staff gave us first-hand experience of the impact of alcohol. And it came against a backdrop of information released by the Scottish Government which revealed the astonishing and disturbing alcohol-related death rate. Tayside deaths in which alcohol was a major factor is nearly twice the UK average, at 197% of the UK figure.
“Then the Scottish Government released the figure of £2.25 billion per year – which is the cost to Scottish society of alcohol misuse, although of course the costs are far higher to individuals and to families whose lives can be ruined.
“Drink related accidents, in which people end up so drunk they need hospitalisation are regrettably by far the largest number of incidents which A&E staff are required to deal with at weekends. Alcohol-induced violence cause many of the cases which police will be dealing with on a Friday or Saturday night.
“Our emergency services should be available to help people who need them, not having to spend all their time mopping up damage caused by people who willfully abuse alcohol then get involved in incidents.
Joe FitzPatrick said: “The Scottish Government is proposing radical action to tackle Scotland’s problems with alcohol, but it is also for each and every one of us to think about what we’re drinking and the effect that has on ourselves and public services.
“Alcohol misuse costs Scottish society £2.25 billion a year. Recent reports estimating that 30% of ambulance journeys are alcohol related put the cost to the ambulance service at £30 million – today’s figures show it could be much more than that. On our night-shift, we heard that the majority of call-outs are alcohol-related, so I am not surprised that is is as high as 68% of calls.
“At the start of alcohol awareness week I would urge everyone to look at their relationship with alcohol, how much they drink, and the impact it is having on their lives and on their communities.”
02Oct
Dundee SNP MSPs Shona Robison and Joe FitzPatrick today commented on the collapse of Labour MSP Paul Martin’s Private Members Bill which aimed to ‘end all car parking charges across the NHS in Scotland’.
Joe FitzPatrick said: “Paul Martin’s NHS Parking (Scotland) Bill was a deliberate attempt to mislead the public and pretend that Labour was doing something to end hospital car parking charges, when everyone knows it was Labour that brought in car parking charges at Ninewells. The public are also aware that the SNP Government has already abolished car parking charges at all Scottish hospitals except three, including Ninewells, where Labour had tied the Health Boards into long-term private car parking deals.
“Paul Martin’s Bill would have lined the pockets of the directors of these private companies with millions of pounds taken from direct patient care to buy out long-terms contracts which Labour saddled us with in the first place.
“Paul Martin’s Bill was an exercise in hypocrisy and opportunism. It aimed to abolish charges that Paul Martin and the last Labour Executive actually brought in themselves and which an SNP government have already scrapped.”
Public Health Minister Shona Robison said: “The Scottish Government has abolished car parking charges at all Scottish hospitals with the exception of three, including Ninewells. The reason this car park still has charges is because Labour used the private finance initiative to fund them. To buy the contracts out would be hugely expensive. And Scotland is facing £500m cuts to its budget introduced by the UK Government.
“These long-term PFI contracts – 30 years in the case of Vinci Park who run Ninewells – were signed in 2001 and supported by previous Labour Health Ministers. Andy Kerr, the Minister for Health and Community Care re-iterated the principle in several debates in 2004 and 2006 and in answers to many MSPs and the BMA, among other organisations, who called for car parking fees to be scrapped.
“Labour MSPs who supported Paul Martin’s Bill are guilty of complete hypocrisy and opportunism. No Labour politician condemned the arrangements of the previous seven years under Labour/Lib Dem administrations when visitors and staff at the car park had to pay.
“We raised a Freedom of Information Request to establish that no Labour politician had previously raised the issue at all when they were in power.
“Labour politicians at no time called for the contracts to be ended, or ‘re-negotiated’ at public expense. They had eight years to do when they were in power but did not do so. Then when the Scottish Government succeeds in abolishing car parking charges, up pops Paul Martin with his opportunistic and hypocritical Bill. It has failed because people can see it for what it was, a deliberate attempt to mislead.”
