I’ve just watched a very moving programme which, although not directly related to any of our usual topics actually encompasses many of the issues around lack of funding that we regularly take issue with in both the childcare and nursing home arenas.
For those of you who don’t know, Kym Marsh is an actress on the UK soap ‘Coronation Street’ who, tragically earlier this year lost her son Archie after he was born 18 weeks premature. In this programme shown on ITV, Kym discusses whether there is more that the Government could do in terms of research funding to prevent such tragedies occurring in the future.
Kym Marsh, Coronation Street Actress
As well as meeting several mothers who were going through the agony of premature births, Kym Marsh also met Ann Keen MP from the Department of Health and asked her some very direct questions around the issue of funding research into premature births.
Kym Marsh explained to Ann Keen that Tommy’s, the children’s charity which funds medical research into miscarriage, stillborn and premature births has estimated that as much as £1billion is spent annually on managing the condition of premature babies and asked the question as to whether it would be more cost effective to encourage more funding into the causes of premature births than having to fund the consequences of them?
In an answer that regular readers of these pages will by now be familiar, Ann Keen responded that a ‘Toolkit’ was now in place to highlight the best ways to treat premature births and when challenged over the fact that one family had to move to four different hospitals with their premature baby because the staffing needed to deal with their case was not available, responded by saying that a ‘taskforce’was set up last year to identify what can be done to help premature baby units.
‘Toolkits’ and ‘Taskforces’- if you remove these terms from the context of dealing with premature births, there is a continuing theme running through the Department of Health which seems to be that actually, ‘we will spend a considerable amount of money debating and pontificating the why’s and wherefores of any healthcare issue, but actually we are secretly hoping that we are not here long enough to have to do anything about it.’
This may sound harsh, but a BILLION pounds in invested in the care of premature babies every year, yet the consideration to ringfence any level of funding is apparently nonsensical? I have no doubt that now that Kym Marsh, a person in the public eye has highlighted this issue, that probably in the next week or so Gordon Brown will announce some new initiative or funding in this area- what a shame it couldn’t have happened sooner whilst some taskforce was sitting around eating pastries whilst putting together a toolkit which will sit under the desks of neonatal units because the nurses don’t have time to read them because they are understaffed…
If you wish to explore this issue further, there is information available at www.itv.com/tonight . Congratulations Kym Marsh on a very moving and what must have been a very difficult programme which will hopefully provide assistance to future generations of mothers.
Update- I’ve also this morning discovered this lady on Twitter Sarah Roper who sells premature baby clothes on her website at Weaniewear which also donates 2% of annual turnover to charity.
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Tags: childcare, Department of Health, funding, funding research, Kym Marsh, medical research, nursing home, premature babies, research funding