What an incredible couple of days it has been!
Thank you so much to all who have added their voices to our petition to the Rt Hon Matt Hancock MP, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to step in and instruct civil servants to resolve this situation.
On Friday, we had 10,000 signatories, but we have now surpassed 40,000. Over the weekend, there was a huge surge of people signing up, who think it is wrong that Mildmay Hospital has to close it’s doors because NHS Commissioners and NHS England won’t resolve their funding issues. Right now, patients are being referred to us but are stuck in acute NHS beds and not getting the specialist treatment and care they need because the commissioners won’t fund them (for complex reasons, but we believe, are easily resolvable).
It seems so simple:
We need £5 million per year to run our hospital. The NHS currently saves about £170 million a year by using generic antiretroviral HIV drugs, so this should not be an issue
Our beds are about £504 cheaper per patient per week than if they are kept in NHS hospitals.
While advances in HIV treatment mean that many people will have a normal lifespan, in the UK we have an enduring high level of late diagnosis – 40% of those diagnosed in 2018.
This increases the risk of dying within the first year of diagnosis by a factor of ten!
Our highly-skilled doctors, nurses, and therapists are experts in specialist HIV care for adults with physical, cognitive and psychosocial difficulties associated with living with HIV.
Because Mildmay is a charity providing NHS services and not an NHS Trust, when we run out of money, it will simply have to close. Please help us #SaveMildmay
We have the backing and support of so very many MPs, organisations, charities, activists, concerned groups, media organisations, celebrities (including our Patron, Sir Cliff Richard) and the thousands of people who have lent their support by signing our petition.
We will have more media coverage this week (we’ll let you know), and Pink News has published an article highlighting our cause just this morning.
We will deliver our petition to parliament soon, but wouldn’t it be amazing if we could reach 50,000 or even 100,000 signatures by the time we do?
So we keep on going on and we still need your help to keep talking to people and sharing links to our petition. We are determined to succeed, and we believe that with your help, we will.
With love and grateful thanks,
Everyone at Mildmay Hospital