FOREIGN AID: PUT BRITAIN FIRST
Keep cash for the NHS says top cancer doctor
THE £2billion a year cost of health tourism should be met from Britain’s bloated foreign aid budget, a leading surgeon claimed last night.
Meirion Thomas said cash-strapped NHS hospitals are at “breaking point” treating thousands of overseas patients
who are not entitled to treatment and have no intention of paying.
Mr Thomas, a respected former cancer surgeon at the Royal Marsden Hospital in London, said health tourism abuses included the treatment of cancer, HIV, infertility and renal failure offered to patients arriving from across the globe.
Many are here from countries already receiving hundreds of millions of pounds in UK foreign aid.
The call for action comes as support floods in for our Stop The Foreign Aid Madness crusade demanding the Government reallocate some of the £13.3billion of taxpayers’ money sent overseas to easing problems at home.
We want to see our underfunded health service, creaking social care system and elderly services prioritised before money is sent out of the UK.
Mr Thomas, now a private consultant surgeon at The Lister Hospital, west London, said: “I throw my weight behind the Daily Express campaign to recover money from foreign aid, which could be redirected to the NHS.”
He said the health tourism scandal is rife in maternity care, with millions spent on free treatment for expectant foreign mothers. Many suffer fertility treatment complications after bungled care in their home countries.
In Britain, Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority rules mean in any one IVF cycle only two embryos can be returned to the womb.
The law is in place to prevent problematic multiple births. Mr Thomas said complications arise because clinics in West Africa are in competition with each other to implant more, leading to a flood of multiple pregnancies which require specialist attention.
He added: “Perhaps the most significant problem is maternity tourists who come here from West Africa, in particular Nigeria, for free, specialist treatment. They do not come here with simple problems. Multiple births almost certainly need neo-natal intensive care management.
“The burden would ease if we could either charge the nation for the cost of treating these people out of its foreign aid gift or make the Government change the rules. Either way action needs to be taken because the NHS is at breaking point.”
Nigeria, the largest economy in west Africa, received £302.2million in UK foreign aid last year.
Thousands of Daily Express readers have backed our crusade by sending in the coupon, right, or signing our online petition demanding billions of pounds in foreign aid be used to alleviate serious problems at home.
Conservative Party member Robert Barnes, 52, from Oldham, spoke for millions when he said: “I am supporting the Daily Express campaign because I believe in the old adage: charity begins at home.
“We should be spending the money on our NHS, adult social care and the elderly who have worked hard to support our country.”
The strength of feeling will intensify pressure on the Government to scrap a commitment that sees 0.7 per cent of our national income sent abroad. Health bosses say all maternity serv- ices, including routine antenatal treatment, is considered “immediately necessary” because during pregnancy there is the potential for an untreated condition to become life-threatening or cause permanent serious damage to either the mother or the baby.
In one example cited by Mr Thomas, a Nigerian mother named Priscilla, who received fertility treatment at home, arrived in the UK to have quadruplets delivered by caesarean section, despite not qualifying for NHS care.
Unpaid
Experts estimate that her medical bills, which included months of intensive care for two babies in a neonatal unit, cost the taxpayer £500,000.
In 2015, a fifth of all births at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, south London, were from non-EU mothers – with unpaid bills costing the taxpayer more than £4million.
John O’Connell, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance, said: “The UK is still borrowing tens of billions every year and yet we send billions abroad with little accountability or oversight. We hear all the time that the NHS needs more money and that there are no savings left to make, but we still see widespread abuse of the system through health tourists not paying for their care.
“Instead, the Government should scrap the 0.7 per cent spending target and be more open about where our money is going.”
The Department of Health said: “We need to make it clear to any prospective mother planning on having their antenatal care and delivering their baby on the NHS that, if they have not paid, we will follow up with them to recover costs.
“Anyone with a debt to the NHS of £500 or more can be denied a future visa or stopped from re-entering the UK on their existing one.”
THIS newspaper’s Stop the Foreign Aid Madness crusade is receiving widespread support. The latest distinguished figure to back us is Meirion Thomas, cancer expert and former consultant surgeon at the Royal Marsden Hospital.
Referring to another big story of the week – health tourism is costing the cash-strapped NHS £2billion – Mr Thomas says: “I throw my weight behind the Daily Express campaign to recover money from foreign aid, which could be redirected to the NHS.”
He explains that many health tourists are women who come from Nigeria where they have received unregulated fertility treatment but then need the expertise available in Britain (for free) to help them through difficult multiple pregnancies. Britain currently sends about £300million to Nigeria in foreign aid. But we are also paying for the care of, for instance, a Nigerian woman called Priscilla who had quadruplets delivered here which cost the British taxpayers half a million pounds.
It’s not an ideal way of balancing the books but if, as seems likely, recovering money from foreign patients is nigh on impossible, then it makes sense to offset the costs by using them as part of our foreign aid contribution.
More to the point we would be better off abolishing the self-imposed 0.7 per cent of GDP target and urgently reassessing our priorities. Development aid and humanitarian relief is a fine thing and Britain cannot cut itself off from the world. It would suffer if it did. But the NHS and our own public services should always take precedence.