The Scottish NHS badly needs a new IT system – Letters

Women with heart problems would especially benefit, says a reader

It's important to keep track of blood pressure (Picture: PA)

Lewis MacDonald MSP, as chairman of the Health and Sports Committee at Holyrood, has rightly highlighted the issue of the NHS in Scotland lacking a modern information technology (IT) system to improve the access and management of medicines.

Without the database such a system would provide, it becomes impossible for either prescribing doctors or pharmacists to gain the information they need on the use and efficacy of all the drugs available and prescribed for a range of conditions.

For example, such an IT system would be particularly useful for the treatment of blood pressure problems, for which there are well in excess of a hundred different drugs now on the market, some with significant side effects. It is vital to reduce the incidence of high blood pressure in all people to avoid the complications of stroke and heart problems. Once identified, blood pressure issues need lifelong monitoring and drug treatment.

In Scotland, the lack of identification and appropriate treatment of women with blood pressure and heart disease is particularly seen in the unacceptably high death rates, averaging 2,600 per annum. This is equivalent to having a Covid pandemic every year.

It is well recognised that women have a different biology from men and respond differently to different drugs.

If there was a modern effective IT system in place in NHS Scotland to be interrogated by pharmacists and prescribing doctors, it could greatly enhance the information available.

This would allow the drugs provided to be tailored to each woman, so they would be well tolerated, avoiding side effects, thus improving health outcomes and lowering the current death rate.

The question for Lewis MacDonald and his Health Committee must be, can they now expedite a modern IT system for the NHS in Scotland?

For many it cannot come soon enough.

Elizabeth Marshall, Western Harbour Midway, Edinburgh

Not anti-semitic

Actress Maxine Peake is widely reported as making a claim that the Israeli secret service taught US police the tactic of kneeling on a victim’s neck.

Now, this claim is unsubstantiated, as far as I can see, and directed at an Israeli institution, but how is it anti-semitic?

The Israeli secret service is Jewish, of course, but is her claim an attack on Jewry in general or on the Israeli state that might have sanctioned such a barbarous policy of suffocating someone in order to subdue them?

I find the blurring between what is Jewish and what is Israeli deeply concerning. Are we not allowed to criticise anything the Israeli state might endorse? Are we not allowed, for example, to criticise Israeli settlement expansion into the West Bank as de facto occupation of territory that is not theirs? Are we not allowed to even suggest Israeli policy towards Palestinians might have unpleasant similarities with South-African apartheid? Is this anti-semitic? The debate about what constitutes anti-semitism has long been getting out of hand.

Trevor Rigg, Greenbank Gardens, Edinburgh

Irony on wheels

I agree with Clark Cross (Letters, 30 June) as I have seen folk on bikes jump red lights and cycle on pavements. When it comes to motorists, however, parking on the pavement, on double yellow lines or double parking never happen. Cars with faulty lights, smelly exhausts and other defects are never seen on the streets. I do not know the numbers, but I am sure motorists guilty of driving without insurance or an MOT are small in number and those driving under the influence of alcohol – well, perish the thought.

Look at the way Edinburgh motorists took to the 20mph speed limits – like ducks to water. These 20mph limits and Presumed Liability (which most of Europe lives quite happily with) are designed to protect vulnerable road users. Protecting the vulnerable has been high on the agenda during the Covid 19 lockdown and for good reason. Presumed liability of course would apply to a cyclist in collision with a pedestrian, not only to motorists in collision with more vulnerable road users.

Benedict Bate, South Clerk Street, Edinburgh

No whitewash

Richard Leonard (Perspective, 30 June) rightly points to the outrageous scandal in Scotland’s care homes, worse than England and possibly worst in the world. Add to this those others in the wider care system, whether domiciliary or as a hospital inpatient or outpatient, who died at home or in hospital or were sent home to die after hospital-acquired infection without being tested and the true extent of this scandal is horrendous.

Even now not all care home staff have been tested and government policy is not to test domiciliary carers. Had only one death occurred in a non-governmental organisation the Health and Safety Executive would have been delving into practices and procedures and issuing improvement orders. This gross neglect must not be whitewashed. The government must be held to account and rectify the shortcomings.

John McIntosh, Orchard Road, Edinburgh

Money talks

Tourism secretary Fergus Ewing told Holyrood’s Culture, Tourism, Europe and External Affairs Committee that the Scottish and UK governments are having” amicable and constructive” discussions about the possibility of extending the furlough scheme (your report, 26 June) “Amicable and constructive”, that is a first. Amazing what a desire for money will do.

Andrew Heatlie, Cleland Avenue, Peebles

No masking ignorance

The latest Covid figures completely vindicate Scotland’s decision to diverge from the UK approach to the virus. Thanks to superior leadership, proper planning, a better performing NHS and a better test and trace system plus clearer messaging we have had no deaths in the last four days while England has suffered well over 300.

The argument that the economy will suffer due to a more cautious approach is disproved by the experience in light touch Sweden, where the economy is faring no better than in Denmark, which closed its borders and enforced far stricter measures. Until consumers feel confident that the virus is under control, they will avoid all but essential shopping.

When shopping in Asda at the weekend, most were not wearing masks while other people ignored the No Entry signs meant to ensure a proper one-way system.

However, our progress in tackling the pandemic risks being undone if face coverings are not worn in shops or asymptomatic tourists flood into Scotland without being tested at the Border.

The publicity photo of former Secretary of State David Mundell shopping while not wearing a mask and Tory councillors boasting on social media that they will only listen to Boris Johnson’s advice are not helping Scotland.

Mary Thomas, Watson Crescent, Edinburgh

Begging bowl

With all the talk of closing the Border with the rest of the UK, I was wondering: is it just the English people that the SNP wants to keep out or would the extra billions of pounds that they are begging for from the UK Government also be turned back at Berwick?

Alex Gallagher, Labour Councillor, North Ayrshire Council, Phillips Avenue, Largs

Change record

The pontifications (Letters, 30 June) from Steuart Campbell and Richard Dixon as to as to how and why ‘we’ must strive to avert manmade climate changes depend on two quite unproven assumptions.

First that climate ‘actions’ by the UK could possibly influence the world’s other nations, despite their emitting the great bulk of the planet’s greenhouse gases and, second, that our decarbonisation alone could benefit the local or global climate.

Undertaking Messrs Campbell’s and Dixon’s suggestions, based mainly on eliminating fossil fuels as the main source of our energy, would cost us £trillions, with absolutely no evidence that the money could be well spent.

Nations non-compliant in curbing CO2 – many of them, including the USA, China and Germany, now extending coal mining to fuel energy for their industry – would not even notice what we could do here to ‘help’ the world’s climate.

As nations impoverished by the Covid-19 plague, we in the UK are having to struggle to survive economically. We may not succeed. Therefore, the costly, legally enshrined provisions of our Climate Change Acts are unrealistic and entirely outdated. These Acts demand urgent repeal.

(Dr) Charles Wardrop, Viewlands Road West, Perth

Drop of nonsense?

Steuart Campbell’s belief in man-made global warming has led to him writing a bizarre letter (Scotsman, 30 June) including a mad idea to spray 17 million square kilometers of the Earth’s surface with water droplets.

He really ought to keep up with the latest climate news. Michael Shellenberger, who has been a global climate campaigner for decades, this week published a major U-turn in an international news outlet saying among other things “On behalf of environmentalists everywhere, I would like to formally apologise for the climate scare we created over the last 30 years”.

Geoff Moore, Braeface Park, Alness, Highland

Separate ideas

Some corresepondents use the word ‘separatism’ to condemn any reference to independence. In view of the fact that it will soon be the Fourth of July, I wonder if they might start a campaign to persuade the USA to rename the day American Separatism Day. They might seek international support from any Norwegians still distressed about the dissolution of their country’s union with Sweden or people from Finland and the Baltic States who long for the golden days when they were united with Russia.

(Dr) PM Dryburgh, Falcon Avenue, Edinburgh

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