SO IT looks like our already crippled NHS is to be the victim of even more cutbacks.
This week we learned East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust is proposing to axe its only bereavement counsellor as part of a multi-million pound cost-cutting exercise.
I fear it's only a matter of time before we're told to take our own sleeping bags and packed lunches when we go into hospital.
Oh, and if you've any spare tins lurking at the back of the cupboard, they'll be gratefully received.
Every few months it seems there's a new bombshell - and it's never good news is it?
Thankfully I've never had cause to use the bereavement service, but plenty of people in this area are willing to speak up for what an important resource it is - not least the 500 who have signed a petition against its closure.
Health bosses say the same counselling could be provided by GPs and the voluntary sector.
But there's a six-to-eight month waiting list to see a GP for bereavement counselling and inconvenient though it might be for NHS bosses, grief can't wait.
Many of these people need immediate help in understanding inquests and hospital procedures.
As for using the voluntary sector - to me that seems presumptuous.
We're lucky in this part of the world to have wonderful volunteers without whom the NHS would be on its knees, but they have a limit .
It's the same old story, cutting back, reducing services, making things stretch further, but things can only go so far.
So far hospital bosses have rationed milky drinks, removed lightbulbs, limited hot meals, and banned electric fans to save money - all measures so petty they are laughable.
But axing something as important as the bereavement service isn't funny.
New extensions at the Royal Blackburn and Burnley General hospitals are great for East Lancashire, and we're lucky to have such a modern, clean wards.
But I fear we're paying dearly for it.
It came to light earlier this year that we're paying £20million-a-year in interest payments to the firms which built the new hospitals - enough to employ 1,000 nurses every single year during the 35-years it'll take to pay off.
And when you put it like that I wonder how many of us would rather have new wards or a decent service?
It's a sad day when you have to reduce things to terms of money, but even in financial terms the sums don't add up.
By doing away with the post of bereavement counsellor the trust will be saving £30,000, but if the lack of such a service means people find it harder to cope with their grief, surely the time they will have off work, going to see their GP, and the money they'll possibly cost the NHS on medication will be much more?
The decision hasn't been made yet. Health bosses say they are only proposing the axing of the bereavement service but that it's not a definite.
I would urge them please, please, reconsider.
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