I’m reblogging this piece of Mike’s because I share his disgust and the entirely reasonable fears of the doctors over Jeremy Hunt’s advice to parents, who are worried about their children’s skin rashes. The Health Secretary has advised them to go online and Google the symptoms instead. This has appalled doctors, who are concerned that it could lead to parents missing the signs that their child has a serious disease, such as meningitis. http://voxpoliticalonline.com/2016/02/01/jeremy-hunt-health-secretary-or-horseman-of-the-apocalypse/
Mike’s comment begins
We should be hammering on the doors of Parliament, demanding the resignation – if not the head – of hapless health bungler Jeremy Hunt.
His latest calamity is a claim that parents in need of urgent medical help could look online for help with their child’s rash.
This advice – potentially fatal if a child has meningitis and it isn’t diagnosed properly and quickly – prompted the #GPnotGoogle campaign on Twitter amid an outpouring of scorn and demands, by qualified doctors, for a retraction.
Hunt’s concern is to save money while privatising the NHS by stealth. He does not want people using it if he can avoid it. He has stated previously that he wants it privatised, and so should not be let anywhere near this most treasured of British institutions.
And this is one of the most monumentally stupid and dangerous pieces of advice I’ve heard in a little while. Meningitis is an horrific disease, which can kill, mutilate and incapacitate in a very short space of time. There were numerous cases on television, both national and local, a few years ago featuring truly terrible stories of tots that the disease had destroyed in the space of a day or so. One of those it didn’t kill, lost their lower arms and legs to the disease. Other children have been left brain damaged. Faced with such an horrific disease, the last thing that anyone should recommend is that they simply look up the symptoms on Google. It needs a proper diagnosis by a qualified doctor.
And very definitely, people need better advice and guidance than that provided by Hunt. It’s time he was struck off and sent packing now.