Troops 'waiting for NHS treatment'

12 April 2012

Thousands of troops are unable to perform frontline tasks due to injuries, it has emerged.

The Daily Telegraph reports that the 5,000 are having to wait for treatment on the NHS while a military hospital, the Royal Hospital Haslar, in Gosport, Hampshire, is vastly underused.

But a Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said it was because injured troops were convalescing, not because they were waiting for treatment, that they could not return to the frontline.

The MoD prefers the Royal Centre for Defence Medicine at Selly Oak Hospital in Birmingham to Haslar hospital, sending injured troops there for initial treatment before they are referred to their local NHS hospitals and GPs.

Dr Peter Golding, a consultant at the 350-bed Haslar hospital, which is due to become a civilian hospital next March, said he was being sent two or three referrals a week, some travelling from Scotland and Germany, because their local hospitals "could not cope".

"It is an absolute scandal that the military do not get the preferential treatment they need," he said.

Injured troops who are temporarily not fit for frontline duties are classed as P7R. This means that they may only be able to perform administrative duties or similar tasks until they are fully fit again.

Dr Golding said it was "ridiculous" that injured troops were not treated in "one secure wing". The former Royal Navy doctor said that 70 disillusioned military consultants had left the services in the past five years.

He said: "What we are seeing is that a large number of servicemen cannot be deployed on operations because of their injuries. But here at Haslar we have a fantastic set-up which is being ignored and is closing. There is no reason for P7R troops not to be taken through Haslar, but the military has set its heart on Selly Oak."

Between 2003 and last year, British troops in Iraq suffered 6,600 casualties. Earlier this week the newspaper reported that a wounded paratrooper being treated at Selly Oak had been harangued by a Muslim visitor after being placed in a public ward.

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