A lame response to NHS ward closures

If there is one thing more depressing than increasingly frequent ward closures in the NHS, now including cancer care units (Report, 19 November), it is the impossibly complacent responses from the Department of Health. Do they ever step outside their offices in Whitehall? It is no use at all stating that there are “11,900 more nurses on our wards since 2010” when, according to the Nuffield Trust, there is currently a shortage of more than 100,000 staff across the NHS, and the department is clearly not providing the “support they need to deliver excellent safe care for patients”. It would be helpful to know how much money the NHS needs to restore order rather than just how much they have allocated.
Dr Richard Turner
Beverley, Yorkshire

• Your letter-writers (18 November) are concerned that British taxpayers subsidise the medical care of foreign nationals. More than 20% of nurses and doctors in the NHS have been trained overseas at no expense to the UK before migrating here.

It is hypocritical and medically dangerous to attempt to deny care to patients who are visitors to this country, while seeking to have our own care provided by clinicians whose presence in Britain represents a subsidy to the UK many times greater than any possible cost of treating foreign nationals.
Dr Frank Arnold
Brighton

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