Downing Street Says » Military Wards

» Wednesday, October 18, 2006

Military Wards

Put that the MOD appeared mystified yesterday with regards to the Prime Minister’s comments about army wards, the PMOS said that he was surprised by that, as Des Browne had already announced it beforehand.

Put that that was only one military ward, the PMSO said that we were talking about a relatively few number of patients. If people checked the number of military patients, it was somewhere in the region of 14.

Asked about another announcement regarding wards, the PMOS replied that what the Prime Minister said was that there would be military wards, but within an NHS hospital. The PMOS said that the basic argument was still the same: military and medical personnel had to have the ability to constantly hone their skills. It was the same basic argument about why we needed to change the nature of community hospitals, as it was about making sure that specialists were able to constantly exercise their speciality. At the press conference yesterday, Sir Liam Donaldson illustrated that point very well, i.e. someone could not be a specialist if they were only exercising that specialty on very rare occasions.

Asked again about the number of wards, the PMOS said that he would leave it to the MOD to talk about the number of wards. However, in terms of the overall number of patients, it was relatively small. That was the whole point.

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