Message of solidarity to doctors on strike!
Feminist Fightback sends a message of solidarity to the doctors on strike on 26th and 27th April 2016
This Government is planning irreparable damage to our NHS and must be resisted.
We stand in solidarity with Junior Doctors in their fight, not only to defend NHS services against Jeremy Hunt’s dangerous and unsafe doctors’ contract, but as part of a movement against the privitisation of services and the destruction of the NHS.
Doctors, health workers and users of the NHS have been joining forces to fight for the NHS in their local areas and communities.
The NHS is already struggling due to cuts and a chronic lack of staff:
- Spending on general practice has been cut and GP numbers haven’t kept pace with demand. Patients are finding it harder and harder to see their GP.
- Hospitals are in financial crisis and there are severe staff shortages.
- Vital services have been cut or reduced. Too many people with are becoming more seriously ill as they face long waits for help, more people have had to travel hundreds of miles just to get a bed, or have been left to struggle without any support at all.
- Maternity units are facing unprecedented challenges with a serious shortage of midwives.
- Contraceptive and sexual health services are being hit directly as spending has been curtailed – resulting in women being increasingly prevented from fully controlling their sexual and reproductive health.
Feminist Fightback understand that any feminist project must oppose austerity. We have long pointed out that public sector cuts have a disproportionately affected female workers and service users. The Government’s attack on Doctors and the NHS are a part of a savage program of cuts to services – in health care; domestic violence services; universal child benefit; disability benefit; lone parent benefit; pensions; carer’s allowance; housing benefit; education; free school meals; and early-years provision (to name only some).
“…the destruction of such public and common goods is not a unique to the United Kingdom; over the last thirty years, despite their being essential to human life, neoliberal restructuring across the world has privatised, eroded and demolished our shared resources, and ushered in a ‘crisis of social reproduction’.”
“Cuts Are a Feminist Issue” by Feminist Fightback (2011)