The UK 2010 Election and the NHS

Pernicious Aneamia Diaries
The election certainly seems to be of great importance to those like myself, who know they have underlying permenant health conditions. In my case I have Pernicious Anaemia which is a greatly misunderstood disease because of its name and also because it is an auto-immune disease of the blood which is allied to such other blood disorders like Leukemia. Fortunately unlike Leukemia, Pernicious Aneamia is the only red and white blood cell disorder that has a cure at least for the red cell malformations. This comes in the form of B12 injections. However there is yet to be a cure for the second part of the disease which is where the white cells wrongly attack organs like the stomach where they destroy the peritial cells which are the cells needed to absorb b12 and iron. As a result the sufferer requires life long injections of b12 and in the rarer version like my own they must constantly guard against the subsiduary diseases, sustained from long term iron deficiency. It is a lonely difficult and exhausting disease which has none of the sympathy of Leukemia but all of the symptoms.

NHS
I really hate patronising buddies who cruelly say that I should just take a few iron pills and a couple of Guinesses and I'll be will be alright as an uneducated NHS nurse said to me! The ignorance of this disease in the NHS beggars belief, where for the last 30 years patients have had to endure the wrong medical formulary of having the cure every three months when in actual fact the inventors of the cure Addison Whimple and Murphy nobel prize winners advised the cure B12 must be administered monthly. Additionally in other countries like Canada, USA and Australia the medical formularlies there accept that patients require a monthly injection to be kept well and to hold back the other progessive elements of the auto-immune disease.

Changes?
How delighted I was therefore that Labour MP's took up this call to Review the treatment last year. However this became over shadowed by the chaos of the last few months and nothing has a yet been done or called for despite repeated pleas from the Perncious Aneamia Society to keep reviewing types of B12 and new forms of treatment to remove the 3 months advocacy.

Eric Joyce
Eric Joyce MP remains the only MP to have spoken out to request the NHS look into providing another 8 injections on top of the four yearly they provide. As always Mr Joyce often takes up causes that others may avoid because the outcome is unpalatable to authorities like his request for troops out of Afganistan. However Pernicious Aneamia is no less a cause for him because it points out his own and others desire to reform the NHS to create a service that is based on saving lives rather than cost. In that respect it would be the greatest help to the Pernicious Aneamia Society if he could get himself re-elected to re join this campaign to provide the injections that sufferers so badly need. I therefore wish him the best of support on election day.

Aside from that my daily struggle with Perncious Aneamia remains the one challenge which will remain with me after the election posters have come down and the spectre of a hung parliament cling to the walls of Westminister. The collapse of the Heath Service has been going on for many decades. Whatever happens its time we all created, whatever the party, a health service that can rise to the costs required to re-build its failing service.

Here below are supporters of change.

Kiefer Sutherland supports Health Reform in USA on You Tube at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfEFwbRBupK

Tommy Douglas Canadian politician guides how important healthcare is on You Tube
at www.youtube.com?watch?v=If1YAznsnVA&feature=related

Eric Joyce comments on what needs to be done for Pernicious Anemia in the UK

http://youtube.com/watch?v=WRFHytQd8dU

Pernicious Aneamia Society www.pernicious-aneamia-society.org