BLAIR BLUSTERS OVER SELLY OAK

24-10-2006

The Prime Minister's announcement that injured troops are to get a dedicated ward run by the military at Birmingham's Selly Oak hospitalisn't all it's cracked up to be. The Stirrer understands that although soldiers will sleep in dedicated army bays, they won't be entirely segregated from civilian patients.

This will come as no surprise to anyone who knows the hospital - Selly Oak still has a number of mixed male and female wards, despite a government pledge to scrap them in 1999.

In fairness to the hospital, a woman is unlikely to find herself waking up next to a man; beds are arranged in bays of four or six, and these areas are usually given to one sex or the other.

But that doesn't prevent members of the opposite sex wandering in from adjacent bays on the same ward, where general facilities including toilets may be shared.

The clamour for a specialist military facility started a few weeks ago when it was alleged that a member of the British forces was harangued about the war in Iraq by a Muslim visitinga friend.

No one has ever been able totally substantiate the claim, but the story sparked a media hue and cry about the poor treatment of "our boys". Tory defence spokesman Liam Fox joined in the row arguing that it was a "disgrace" for soldiers to be treated alongside members of the public.

The reality is that in the modern NHS it is simply impossible to create the kind of specialist facility that is being demanded - not without spending more money the Health Service doesn't have.

Selly Oak, for instance, has just one day surgery ward so it is impossible to treat troops there separately from the public. The reality is that troops and civilians will continue to mingle at the hospital because it's simply not practical for them not to.