Christmas Appeal: Please give generously to help save our NHS

The NHS is currently facing its largest existential threat in its history. Now more than ever, Keep Our NHS Public needs your help to help save it.

Please take a moment to read our urgent appeal for support. This Christmas, please give whatever you can to help us keep campaigning and holding the Government to account for its failure to keep us safe this year.

Without a doubt 2020, has been dominated by the coronavirus pandemic. At the time of writing the official number of deaths from Covid-19 in the UK are 58,245. If we factor in excess deaths indirectly related to Covid-19, the figure is closer to 80,000. This is undeniably the most important issue of our time, and of course the NHS in more ways than one, is right at the heart of the story.

While the NHS has been our ‘frontline’ against the virus, the crisis has exposed multiple ways in which Government policy, both in the present and prior to the outbreak, has failed our NHS and in so doing has failed all of us.

• They failed to provide proper PPE
• They failed to reward NHS staff properly for their sacrifices by excluding them from the already inadequate public sector pay deal
• Outsourcing and unchallenged institutional racism left frontline workers and BAME communities suffering greater risk and death in the NHS and in wider society
• They failed to organise prompt and sufficient lockdown measures – prioritising profit rather than health and safety
• They failed to provide coherent and consistent public messaging – leaving the public confused and resentful
• They stuck by appalling policies that lead to the discharge of symptomatic patients back into care homes – which created a deadly surge of cases among some of our most vulnerable elderly people
• They left the NHS weakened, with 100,000 staff vacancies, facing the pandemic
• They gave contracts to private firms to handle essential public health measures which has been a disaster - meaning that we still do not have an effective test and trace strategy 

Britain’s death toll is subsequently the worst in Europe.

The crisis has exposed all the ways in which the NHS was left woefully unprepared to respond properly, yet again as a direct result of Government policy.

With some NHS services already run by profit-driven firms, the longest period of defunding ever experienced, a crisis in staffing (exacerbated by the Government’s attitude to NHS staff pay and conditions), mismanagement and the external pressures of a society under constant strain from Government austerity measures since 2010, the NHS has struggled. The NHS that was called upon to fight Covid-19, was already fragmented and weakened to such an extent, it is only through the heroic work and sacrifice of NHS staff that they have managed to keep the situation from getting even more out of control.

At Keep Our NHS Public, we’ve been campaigning against this for years, but now we have an historic, if tragic, opportunity to show to a wider general public than ever before, why we must take the NHS back into public hands, properly fund it and pay its staff what they deserve at last.

We’re asking you to dig deep and this Christmas, give us the gift of being able to continue to fight for our NHS.

Please donate whatever you can spare, ideally by making a small but regular monthly donation. A regular donation means we can grow our movement month by month and go into 2021 better resourced to Keep Our NHS Public.

Thank you for your generosity.