16 January 2004
Health ministers have dismissed Liberal Democrat claims that NHS patients' lives are under threat from outdated, 'patched up' life-saving equipment.
Public health minister Melanie Johnson instead claimed that the UK leads the rest of Europe when it comes to replacing vital health care equipment, while a spokeswoman for the Department of Health accused the LibDems of 'playing cheap politics' with patient care.
The row was sparked by the publication on January 13 of the LibDem's Best before study into life-saving equipment at NHS hospitals.
Author Paul Burstow, the party's health spokesman, claimed patients are 'missing out on life-saving diagnoses' because underfunding by successive governments had 'left a legacy of out-of-date equipment, broken-down scanners and crumbling hospitals'.
Burstow said two out of five linear accelerators and a third of MRI scanners, both used in cancer treatments, were out of date. He also claimed that 10% of CT scanners were too old.
Burstow said the cost of upgrading equipment to 'acceptable standards' would be £500m, while the total backlog of repairs could be as high as £3.4bn.
'Failure to invest in new equipment and basic maintenance is letting down patients and leaving NHS staff to patch up and make do,' he warned.
But Johnson hit back, saying the government was 'reversing years of under-funding and inadequate provision of essential cancer equipment'.
She said the DoH had delivered 1,000 pieces of new equipment to hospitals since 2000 and was committed to full upgrades by 2006.
'A recent survey of equipment across Europe found that the UK is the only country that meets proposed criteria for the age profile of CT and MRI scanners,' she added.
PFjan2004
