Unite supports NHS SOS protest over corridor care - February 25th

 Activists from Just Treatment and the NHS SOS coalition organised a protest march from St Thomas Hospital to parliament to highlight the scandal of corridor care in the NHS. Unite reps and officers turned out to support them.

NHS union reps, staff and patients pushed beds and wheelchairs over Westminster bridge to highlight the undignified and unsafe conditions patients are forced to endure.

The rally in parliament square highlighted the scale of the crisis with an estimated 16,000 avoidable deaths due to corridor care in 2024. We demanded the government invest in social care and in creating more beds in the NHS, so patients can be safely discharged from hospitals to make way for new patients, and so there are sufficient beds to meet patient needs. The NHS has significantly less beds than the OECD average of 4.1 beds per 1000, with only 2.4 beds per 1000 people in the UK.

The corridor care crisis is easily solvable, if the government will invest the money to create the bed capacity in social care and the NHS.