The Chair of the British Medical Association’s (BMA) Northern Ireland Council has said the decision to temporarily suspend emergency general surgery at the South West Acute Hospital (SWAH) due to a lack of consultant general surgeons is the “result of a failure to develop and implement an effective workforce strategy for the Northern Ireland health service over the last decade”.

Dr. Tom Black said: “This service is unable to continue because there are not a sufficient number of surgeons to maintain an effective and safe rota.

“The care provided to patients in our health system relies on its healthcare workers, who are having to work under tremendous pressures, as we have seen this week.

“It is therefore imperative that they are at the very least provided with the adequate terms and conditions if we want them to stay and work here.

“There also needs to be an urgent reform of unfair punitive pensions rules, which are forcing many doctors to retire early, adding more pressure on a shrinking clinical workforce.

“The service for patients in the south west of the country is now under huge pressure in both primary and secondary care, and this closure of acute surgical services in the area will put additional pressures on the ambulance service there, not to mention on Altnagelvin Hospital in the north west.

“The continuing collapse of services that we are seeing play out in our hospitals and GP surgeries across Northern Ireland is due to repeated inadequate funding in the NHS over the last decade,” added Dr. Black.