NI health crisis: SDLP's Karen McKevitt says politicians are to blame for chaos

Politicians are responsible for the chaos happening inside hospitals, a former SDLP assembly member has said.

Karen McKevitt was speaking after seeing the crisis up close during four days in Newry's Daisy Hill Hospital, where she was treated for pneumonia.

All politicians, including herself and her party, have let health care workers down, Mrs McKevitt said.

If Stormont does not return, she added, "politics should be taken out of health because people are dying".

Ms McKevitt is a Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) councillor on Newry, Mourne and Down Council who previously represented South Down in the assembly.

In an exclusive interview with BBC News NI from her home in Newry, she described witnessing chaos as she lay seriously ill in Daisy Hill Hospital.

She said her breathing became so laboured in the early hours of last Tuesday she feared for her life.

"I actually thought that I was going to die," she said.

Mrs McKevitt, who worked as an assembly member between 2011 and 2016 when transformation of the health service was often high on Stormont's agenda, said she had been one of those politicians who had "promised to protect the services at Daisy Hill".

"But what I saw the last number of days being a patient, I have to say, we need to move in a different direction here."

In a statement, the Southern Trust that it was finding it increasingly difficult to deliver the health care needed to "meet all the increasing demands of our population".

It added that staff were "hugely committed to doing the best we can for patients".

Mrs McKevitt said she was admitted to Daisy Hill but was initially given a bed in a crowded "makeshift ward" because existing hospital wards were full.

"There were beds lining up the middle of the temporary ward," she recalled.

"There were probably six separate cubicles and every one of us had beds at our feet belonging to somebody else."

At one point Mrs McKevitt, alongside four other patients with pneumonia, were treated overnight in a hospital reception area after their ward closed due to a staff shortage.

"I will never forget a nurse coming to tell me that the makeshift ward we were in had to close because there was no one to staff it overnight," she said.

"We were moved to a reception area where my bed was below CCTV cameras. I didn't know whether they were on or off."

She added that her bed "blocked a fire door and a screen separated me and a male patient for privacy".

The patients were treated close to a public toilet in the reception area which was being used by hospital visitors.

Mrs McKevitt said she and other patients had no dedicated area to wash themselves and had to use the public toilet.

"We had no showering facilities, there was nothing. I washed my hair in the sink, towel-dried it as best I could and tied it up in a ponytail."

Despite having pneumonia, she had no choice but to return to bed with damp hair.

"It was horrendous, but the care we received was brilliant."

She was one of the younger patients on the temporary ward, but she witnessed older and frailer people being left alone for long periods of time.

"I was frightened that if a crash team needed to come through during the night to one of us they wouldn't be able to, as our stuff was scattered across the floor and the trolleys were all so close to each other no one could get through," she said.

"There was no dignity - the nurses were overwhelmed, I have seen it with my own eyes and that makes a difference when you see it for yourself.

"I eventually got to know some of the faces over a couple of days as I recognised them from their coughing. We all had an individual cough.

"The nurses have no choice where they put us, but we have a choice how we are going to change this because it cannot continue to be the new norm."

Nine days into the new year and we have not even reached the peak yet. Winter pressures are going to continue.

Prof Ian Young. Northern Ireland's chief medical officer, this morning said that officials are concerned about the rising flu figures, which are worse than Covid.

Those added pressures are being placed on an already fragile system.

In the courts today, Lord Justice Colton dismissed a case from two women who took legal action to highlight long hospital waiting lists.

He said resolution could not be found in the courts and it was up to politicians to sort out - but it's striking we have a politician, Karen McKevitt, saying politics should be taken out of health.

But of course in Northern Ireland, we don't have a government at the moment.

The mother of five children, who are all either working or pursuing a career in the health service, said the problems in the health care system must be addressed.

"The nurses and health care assistants were run off their feet but they apologised to us the patients and said this is not what we signed up for.

"And they are right, they didn't sign up for this type of treatment."

After spending four days in the emergency department, Mrs McKevitt was discharged on the basis that she rested at home.

She is now calling on the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) to return to government at Stormont.

The Northern Ireland Assembly has not functioned property since last February when the DUP pulled its first minister out of the Stormont's ruling executive.

The DUP's move was in protest over the Northern Ireland Protocol, the post-Brexit arrangements which created a trade barrier in the Irish Sea.

They have refused to return to power-sharing government until the issue is resolved.

On Sunday, a former leading health official, John Compton, said the ongoing political deadlock was a catastrophe for the health service in Northern Ireland.

Mrs McKevitt said: "The hokey-cokey politics has not helped. People being afraid of change, and I am one of them

"Our nurses need their pay rise, they need an enhancement to come back into the health service, so do all of our health care workers, all those who are visiting in the community

"They get more working in a supermarket and they are leaving in their droves."

The SDLP politician said in her experience last week, religious and political affiliation did not matter to patients or staff in the ward.

"Nobody was asking were you a Protestant or a Catholic in the hospital. Nobody was talking about Brexit.

"They were looking around them and seeing what was happening, like a war zone."

In a statement, the Southern Trust said its hospitals are working "far beyond the capacity available".

It urged patients and their families to help alleviate pressures by leaving hospitals within 48 hours of being discharged.

"We all want health and social care services capable of providing timely care to everyone who needs it, when they need it," a trust spokesperson said.