Side-effects of health walkout hit patient

By MARTIN JOHNSTON health reporter

Alan Graham is angry that his kidney transplant surgery at Auckland Hospital has been delayed for months by the radiographers' strike.

The 57-year-old from Tauranga was booked to have the operation last Wednesday, after a family friend agreed to donate one of her kidneys.

People have two kidneys, but can live a healthy life with one.

Mr Graham said yesterday that hospital staff gave him a week's warning that the appointment might be cancelled because of the strike.

Then last Tuesday, hours before he was due to travel to Auckland, they said the hospital might be unable to do the operations until early next year.

About 90 radiographers at Auckland, Starship, Green Lane and National Women's Hospitals struck for four days last week.

They intend to walk out for a further 48 hours next week, unless talks on Thursday between their union and the Auckland District Health Board can break the pay dispute.

Radiographers at Middlemore Hospital and the Manukau Superclinic also plan to start rolling strikes the following week.

Mr Graham is among thousands of patients whose non-urgent surgery or other procedures or assessments have been delayed by last week's strike.

"I'm very frustrated and angry at the union," Mr Graham said.

"I don't blame the hospital at all. I blame the union and probably the Labour[-led] Government for not funding the health system properly."

Strikes in essential industries such as health should be banned, he said.

Mr Graham was diagnosed with a degenerative kidney disease 10 years ago and has been on a home dialysis Machine for three years.

He said he always felt "borderline unwell", and had been in hospital several times with peritonitis, an abdominal lining infection which is a risk in his type of dialysis.

An accountant, he gave up full-time work because he lacked the energy. He works part-time from home, but hopes to return to full-time work after the transplant.

He would have had to stay in Auckland for about six weeks after the transplant for monitoring and had made arrangements for accommodation and to get his work done.

His daughter, Sue Graham, said her father's health had been balanced on a knife-edge for three years.

She said the last-minute cancellations would have been gut-wrenching for all the patients hit by the strike, as it was for her father and their family.

"All the parties involved have a lot to answer for," she said.

The Auckland board has begun re-scheduling possibly hundreds of patients due to be seen during the second radiographers' strike.

Spokeswoman Brenda Saunders said the board's hospitals were back to normal yesterday.

A backlog of acute surgery had been cleared and there had been no great rush of patients after the end of the strike on Saturday.

The senior doctors' union has backed the Auckland radiographers' call for arbitration - a move rejected by the board, which is worried that arbitration could fuel other groups' wage demands.

Ian Powell, of the Association of Salaried Medical Specialists, said arbitrators should be called in if Thursday's talks failed, as the dispute was out of control and patient safety was threatened.

Further reading
Feature: Our sick hospitals