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Saturday 15 May 2010

Immigration Blamed for Overloaded Accident and Emergency Departments BNP News

Immigration Blamed for Overloaded Accident and Emergency Departments BNP News

Immigration has been named as one of the primary causes of a dramatic increase of visits to Accident and Emergency (A&E) departments to nearly 20 million in the last year.
According to official figures, the number of people visiting A&E departments last year rocketed to over 20.5 million in England alone, equal to fully 40 percent of the entire population of Britain.
This marks an increase of five percent in one year. A&E attendances remained static during the 1980s and 1990s, but have increased exponentially since then as mass immigration has speeded up.
Industry experts have ascribed the increase to GP out-of-hours rules and immigration.
According to John Heyworth, president of the College of Emergency Medicine, it is the combination of “confusion over GP out-of-hours services and increases in immigrants who tend to visit A&E routinely and not register with family doctors” which is thought to be the reason behind the rise.
He said that in inner cities and particularly London, “immigrants tended to visit A&E instead of GPs.”
The statistics also show that it is elderly British people, who require A&E services in greater proportion, who are being shoved aside by the flood of foreigners.
“The rise is real and it needs to be recognised. We have an ageing population and more elderly are coming into the emergency departments,” Mr Heyworth said.
Dr Andrew Hobart, Chairman of the British Medical Association’s Emergency Medicine Subcommittee said: “The harsh weather over last winter combined with the outbreak of pandemic flu will have contributed to this sharp rise in attendance at emergency departments compared to the previous year.
“However there is also a longer-term trend that shows an increase in emergency room attendances.”
* The current NHS deficit is estimated to be in the region of £620 million. The Tory/Labour/Lib Dem war in Afghanistan costs £5 billion every year.