Professor Sridhar – ‘Why are so many people going blind in Britain when treatment is available?’
By Bill Heaney
Professor Devi Sridhar, a familiar expert name and voice throughout the covid pandemic in Scotland, has launched an attack on the UK Government’s handling of the NHS crisis.
The Miami-born academic claimed her relatives in the USA “often ask me about the state of the UK” including “Brexit, strike action, rapid changes in political leadership and the rising cost of living”.
Professor Devi Sridhar added: “But my brother who works as an ophthalmologist in the US recently had a question about a lesser-known crisis. ‘Why are so many people going blind in Britain when treatment is available?'”
This related to shock figures showing that 551 people in England had lost their sight as a result of delayed appointments since 2019. In addition, around 620,000 people are waiting for ophthalmology appointments down south.
I am one of the thousands of patients waiting in a long line as eye clinic appointments for Dumbarton are shuffled around between the RAH in Paisley, the Inverclyde Royal Hospital in Greenock and Vale of Leven Hospital. Ed.
“And that simply is what Britain has become,” Professor Sridhar wrote in her latest article for the Guardian, which blamed “Tory cuts and neglect” for the post-pandemic NHS backlog.
“If you are super-wealthy, your health is protected with money. On the other hand, if you are in a working profession such as a teacher, a bus driver, supermarket staff, a university lecturer, mail delivery or a nurse, you are left in a difficult position of risking going blind while waiting months for treatment, or getting into debt when raising funds to pay for private treatment.”
However, according to the Express, she failed to mention the situation in NHS Scotland – despite her high-profile role as a Scottish Government adviser during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Scottish Daily Express has now examined the latest figures from Public Health Scotland.
They show that at the end of December 2022, some 58,228 patients were waiting for an ophthalmology appointment on the NHS – roughly in line with the figures from England. These included 6,164 who had waited for longer than 12 months.
Before the pandemic, at the end of December 2019, there were 27,721 patients on the ophthalmology waiting list with just 267 waiting longer than a year.
There are no figures about how many Scottish patients have lost their sight because the FOI request from the Association of Optometrists only asked about NHS England.
However, the Sight Scotland charity recently called on the Scottish Government to tackle “spiralling ophthalmology waiting times” after a 10 per cent rise in people waiting over 16 weeks.
Chief Executive Craig Spalding said: “People with deteriorating eye conditions just don’t have the time to wait, if ophthalmology waiting times are not improved, they face the very real prospect of permanent damage.”