Medic's Marathon for all our Health

HEADING for Westminster, to say "Hands off our NHS", Clive Peedell is honouring Aneurin Bevan, here seen at start of NHS, who said service 'will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it'.


IN just under a week a medical man with a mission starts out to run 160 miles, from Cardiff to central London, in support of the National Health Service. It's not another charity event. Clive Peedell is not running to raise extra funds, for a service we have all paid for, but to raise awareness of the threat which HM government is posing to our health, with its privatisation plans.

A leading member of the British Medical Association(BMA), Clive is a specialist working in the North East. He will be starting from the statue of Aneurin Bevan, the ex-miner and Health Minister who started the National Health Service. His planned route to London will take him through Prime Minister David Cameron's constituency, Witney in Oxfordshire.

Here in London he will be finishing up at the Department of Health, Richmond House on Whitehall.

This is what Dr. Peedell has to say in his 'Bevan's Run' page on Facebook:

"My name is Clive Peedell and I am Consultant Clinical Oncologist working for the NHS in the North East of England. I am co-chair of the NHS Consultants' Association and a member of BMA Council and BMA political board. I have been an active campaigner against NHS privatisation and market based reforms.

"I believe that a publicly funded, publicly provided and publicly accountable NHS is the most cost effective and equitable way to deliver healthcare to our nation's population.

"This aim of "Bevan's Run" and the associated Bevan's Run blogsite is to raise public awareness about the serious threats that the coalition Government's Health and Social Care Bill poses to the English NHS.

These threats were well summarised in a recent article in the Lancet:
'The proposals are ideological with little evidential foundation. They represent a decisive step towards privatisation that risks undermining the fundamental equity and efficiency objectives of the NHS. Rather than “liberating the NHS”, these proposals seem to be an exercise in liberating the NHS’s £100 billion budget to commercial enterprises”
Professor Margaret Whitehead et al, Dept of Health Inequalities and Social Determinants of Health, University of Liverpool. The Lancet, Volume 376, Issue 9750


"All the key NHS stakeholders have expressed serious concerns about the proposed NHS reforms. The BMA has a policy of calling for the bill to be withdrawn and opposes the whole bill. A recent survey of GPs by the Royal College of General Practitioners showed that three quarters want the bill to be withdrawn.

"In addition, a group of over 400 public health doctors recently wrote an open letter to the House of Lords arguing that the bill will cause “irreparable harm to the NHS, to individual patients, and to society as a whole,” that it will “erode the NHS’s ethical and cooperative foundations,” and that it will “not deliver efficiency, quality, fairness, or choice.”

"Despite this widespread opposition to the proposed reforms, the bill is continuing its passage through Parliamentary process and is likely to be enacted in the Springtime of 2012. It is therefore imperative that the public are informed about what is happening to the NHS, so they can apply pressure to Members of the House of Lords and the House of Commons to stop the passage of the bill.

"Anuerin Bevan, who spearheaded the establishment of the NHS in 1948, famously stated that the NHS 'will last a long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it'

"In recognition of Bevan’s words, I will be running the 160 miles from Bevan's Statue in Cardiff to the Department of Health, Richmond House, in London over 6 days in protest against the Health and Social Care Bill.

"I am very grateful to Dr David Wilson (a fellow Consultant Clinical Oncologist) who as an accomplished long distance runner, will be accompanying me on the journey".


For more of what Clive Peedell has to say on the NHS and where to meet and greet him, see Website:
http://bevansrun.blogspot.com/

For more on NHS issues and campaigning see:

http://www.healthemergency.org.uk/

http://www.keepournhspublic.com/index.php