Charities urge talks on junior doctors

05/04/16 . News

Martin Tod, Chief Executive of the Men's Health Forum, has signed a joint letter to the Secretary of State of Health Jeremy Hunt MP and the chair of the British Medical Association Dr Mark Porter to call upon them to resume negotiations over the new junior doctors’ contract.

The senior health and care charity leaders have called on the Government and the BMA to get back around the negotiating to resolve the junior doctor contract dispute. Writing in the letter, the signatories state:

We deplore the emergence of a situation where strike action in the NHS becomes normalised due to the entrenched positions of both parties.

Patients and carers have not been heard in this dispute. Regardless of where their sympathies lie, they have the right to expect a concerted effort by both sides to resolve the dispute.

The intervention comes ahead of two days of strike action planned for 6 and 7 April 2016. Further strike action planned by the BMA for 26 and 27 April will see an ‘all-out’ walkout by junior doctors, with no emergency care provided. Other signatories of the letter include the Chief Executives of Mind, National Voices and Sue Ryder.

You can read the full letter on the website of National Voices
Read the coverage of the letter in the Guardian

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It’s tough for men to ask for help but if you don’t ask when you need it, things generally only get worse. So we’re asking.

In the UK, one man in five dies before the age of 65. If we had health policies and services that better reflected the needs of the whole population, it might not be like that. But it is. Policies and services and indeed men have been like this for a long time and they don’t change overnight just because we want them to.

It’s true that the UK’s men don’t have it bad compared to some other groups. We’re not asking you to ‘feel sorry’ for men or put them first. We’re talking here about something more complicated, something that falls outside the traditional charity fund-raising model of ‘doing something for those less fortunate than ourselves’. That model raises money but it seldom changes much. We’re talking about changing the way we look at the world. There is nothing inevitable about premature male death. Services accessible to all, a population better informed. These would benefit everyone - rich and poor, young and old, male and female - and that’s what we’re campaigning for.

We’re not asking you to look at images of pity, we’re just asking you to look around at the society you live in, at the men you know and at the families with sons, fathers and grandads missing.

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