Water cans and batteries do not help against shrapnel damage
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- Despite calls for war preparations, Fanny Nilsson, freelance writer and ST doctor, emphasizes that water cans and batteries are not enough to tackle the threat of war. The state of Swedish healthcare would never be able to cope with such a crisis.
- Nilsson points out deficits in the municipal and regional sectors, the closure of emergency surgery at the country’s smaller hospitals and the need for a concrete plan to increase the number of care places and emergency stocks for possible crises.
- Aftonbladet’s editor’s writer Fanny Nilsson calls for concrete solutions for the healthcare system instead of speculation.
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full screenSwedish healthcare is facing the biggest deficits in more than 30 years. How will it deal with a new crisis? Photo: Stefan Jerrevång
The day after the Corona Commission came out with its final report, Russia invaded Ukraine. We went from pandemic to war in one day. Nevertheless, the lessons learned from the crisis were shelved.
Now the country’s leadership says that Sweden’s population must prepare for war. But water cans and batteries do not help against shrapnel damage. Swedish healthcare is still as hollow as Swiss cheese, and this year even more will be planed away.
Excuse me, but how is your stomach?
Lessons from the pandemic
Political experts discuss what the purpose was to thunder so hard in Sälen. Regardless of the strategic intention, it felt extremely gut-wrenching for us who work in a socially important activity such as healthcare. Or the total defense, as we are called now.
We stood on the floor during the pandemic and foolishly thought that now maybe things will turn around, now they seem to understand that the care places are too few, this is too lean. We persevered, persevered, thought: soon things must turn around.
But no.
Already a healthcare crisis
The municipal and regional sector is suffering this year from the biggest deficits since the 90s crisis. SKR’s chief economist Annika Wallenskog says that it is the worst thing she has experienced in 30 years, but that the difference is that in the 1990s there was no money anywhere. It does now.
The irony is that it is the right wing that will perhaps crack the surplus goal – for the defense! – when the social workers didn’t even dare to upgrade welfare.
How dare you in the government, with chest tones, teach the Swedish people about their own preparedness, but not even compensate the healthcare system for the day-to-day operations?
And how does Ulf Kristersson have the guts to insinuate that those born abroad would have failing loyalty – did you miss who it was who drove this country around during the pandemic, drove the buses, cleaned, looked after? A quarter of Swedish healthcare personnel were born abroad, or are second-generation immigrants.
Show some fucking respect, please.
Lack of care places
Before Christmas, the Defense Committee’s report “Strength Gathering” came out, in which it is written that “the ability to sustainably increase the number of care places, especially for emergency surgery and intensive care, is the single most important thing for health care in times of heightened preparedness and war.” At the same time, we have a regulatory authority, IVO, pursuing legal proceedings with threats of damages against our hospitals because they cannot maintain an absolute minimum of care places. In peacetime.
In addition to places of care, war medical care requires emergency surgery. But in recent decades, surgery in smaller hospitals around the country has shut down. The dismantling of emergency surgery with excessive centralization and specialization has been going on for a long time, clearly depicted in SVT’s “The Great Hospital Battle”.
The 18-year-old Viktor died of a ruptured spleen. The hospital he was being treated at no longer had any surgeons, and when one got there it was too late.
Bohlin is misleading
How does the Minister for Civil Defence, Carl-Oskar Bohlin (M), have the guts to sit in Agenda and claim that the government has made historic investments in welfare? How can he think he can get away with saying we should “work faster with the resources we have”?
Sure, the population can buy canned goods and water cans, get to know their neighbors and how to camp indoors. But you must answer us: how should the number of care places increase?
What is the plan for emergency surgery?
Where are the emergency stocks for drugs and equipment?
Where are the agreements that force private healthcare providers to contribute in case of war, agreements that were made in the pandemic?
Stop blaming each other. We don’t care if it is the responsibility of the state, municipality or region. Just answer us: How should a health care system that is dismantled instead of being equipped handle a mass of injured in the event of a crisis or war?
Fanny Nilsson is a freelance writer and works as an ST doctor