Letter

Public health workers under attack – in the soar-away Sun

Sometimes its nice to be noticed, even it is only in being attacked by the Sun. That’s the conclusion public health workers might draw from its delightful story of 5 June by its political editor, Trevor Kavanagh.

Mr Kavanagh says that there are now ‘more bean counters and bureaucrats than qualified nurses’.

The Sun report presents a collage of different job advertisements for five-a-day, smoking cessation, and teenage pregnancy coordinators, contrasting these with the story that Barts hospital in London has turned down a cancer scanner because it costs £500,000 a year to run.

The implication made for readers is that expenditure on prevention workers comes at a cost to ‘life saving equipment’. Ironic therefore that the Royal Council of Nursing announced in the same week that they had more members than at any time in their history.

The headline of this strange piece is Vital Funds Used to Pay Pen-Pushers. Technology aside, isn’t Mr Kavanagh a pen pusher himself?