Invite to Covid & NHS meeting

Hi Media,

I am writing to invite you to our online public meeting around the NHS and Covid-19 taking place tomorrow Tuesday 5th May 7-9pm (registration details below). The meeting will feature an impressive range of experts and will discuss the effects of underfunding, understaffing and privatisation on the ability of the NHS to cope successfully with Covid-19, and how decisions made in government have ultimately cost lives.

Panel speakers are as follows:

Richard Horton – Editor of The Lancet [EDIT: REPLACED BY NEENA MODI, PRESIDENT ROYAL COLLEGE PAEDIATRICS AND CHILD HEALTH]
Professor Allyson Pollock – Consultant in public health, and director of Newcastle University Centre for Excellence in Regulatory Science
Dr John Lister – Health policy academic, author and news editor for Health Campaigns Together
Dr Sonia Adesara – Frontline junior doctor
Pam Kleinot – Producer of Under the Knife – a documentary film on the systematic dismantling of the NHS by an Emmy award winning director

The meeting, hosted by national campaigning organisations Keep Our NHS Public and Health Campaigns Together, will seek to form a very useful background on the issues surrounding this pandemic, and explore the ways forward, from a variety of perspectives. Afterwards there will be an opportunity to take part in a Q&A session.

We will also be announcing a free 5-day Festival of Screenings of the Under the Knife documentary (running from Wednesday 6th of May until Sunday 10th of May) and we are pleased to have the film’s producer Pam Kleinot onboard, telling us about the film and how you can watch it. (To watch the film, please see details below.)

Dr Tony O’Sullivan, Co-Chair of Keep Our NHS Public and retired paediatrician says:

“We are facing the greatest national emergency since the Second World War. Mistakes of profound consequence have been made before and during the pandemic – including governmental attitude to the role of public services in protecting and creating a healthy, well-educated and safe society. Our panel of experts and frontline NHS staff will discuss the lessons to be learned from this tragedy and look at the changes that must now be made.”

I hope you can join us. If you have any questions prior to tomorrow’s event please contact me at: [email protected] or call 07776047472

Best wishes,
Samantha Wathen
Press Officer for Keep Our NHS Public

Register herehttps://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_SeVsKXHHRIa2fvHiDRZVJg
or watch the event live via our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/233222884558123/

To watch documentary film Under the Knife:
https://vimeo.com/360850524
Password: undertheknife102019