Head of hospital trust appeals for patients who require treatment to return

By Lachlan Leeming, Local Democracy Reporter

The head of a South-east London NHS trust has made an impassioned plea for patients who require treatment to return to hospitals, as services suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic begin to restart.

Ben Travis, the chief executive of the Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust, said there were concerns people were continuing to avoid hospitals despite needing treatment unrelated to coronavirus.

In a video message published on Tuesday, Mr Travis said the “chances of catching Covid in our hospitals is extremely low”, and revealed the trust’s two sites, University Hospital Lewisham and Queen Elizabeth Hospital, were restarting services, including elective surgery, after their suspension.

He said: “We are restarting our services in a phased way to make sure we are doing our absolute best we can to protect our staff and also the public and be absolutely confident the chances of catching Covid in our hospitals is extremely low.

“Last month we had fewer than five Covid patients on any day across both our hospital sites, so you can see there isn’t that much Covid around in our boroughs at the moment, but we do obviously have to maintain vigilance at all times.”

Mr Travis said work was under way in the hospitals to “try to separate out the areas where potentially Covid patients might be from non-Covid patients”.

That would include separate entrances and separate groups of staff for those involved with treating coronavirus patients.

The call for more patients came forward as Mr Travis raised fears that people were continuing to avoid hospitals, despite there now being capacity to treat them.

He said: “We are concerned that there are many people out there in our local communities who aren’t accessing treatment when they need it.

“So we know from looking at our waiting lists there are many, many people on those lists who we know need to come in for treatment, but for whatever reason have declined the offer of treatment.

“I really just want to make a plea to you to say we are doing everything we can to make sure our hospital environments are as safe as they possibly can be and to reassure you that the levels of Covid at the moment in our local communities is low.”

The trust head urged people to continue coronavirus-combating efforts such as social distancing, washing hands and wearing face masks to keep transmission levels low.

Pictured top: Lewisham Hospital