Sir Chris Bryant MP, champion for brain injury, followed up on the governments proposed new strategy for acquired brain injury by asking in March how many people had been treated for an acquired brain injury in 2023.
The government's response was that they did not know because data collection is inadequate.
The Tory government is in melt down, the thing is Chris Bryant is Labour and will the strategy for ABI be any different when Labour take over after the next election. Is there any hope at all or are politicians just playing games with the brain injury Community.
(I don't support either party)
It's like an anti-Loreal campaign - 'because you're not worth it.'
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All went quiet after that media attention, not seen anything but some organisations using publicity on that, which nothing came off or not mentioned since.
I think some things have changed in some public institutions. It's pretty easy now to get benefits and PIP, you just need to remind them of the statement to parliament and point out that the assessments do not consider neurological or sensory processing issues. Works every time as long as you have the medical evidence to back it up whereas before they did not consider it.
As for medical and rehab, different health authorities have different protocols for diagnosing head injuries and if you have a bad health authority where they don't do a CT scan or basic sensory testing then you could take steps to ensure you get them. Again, point out the statement to parliament and back it up with the NICE guidelines that says this is standard procedure. Of course they don't have to follow the guidelines but if you say that you will go to your MP then they will do the tests.
As for rehab as far as I can see there's nothing except for serious acute injuries but once they can eat, use the loo and have basic communication or home care then there is nothing there either except antidepressants and counseling. Some health authorities do have some cognitive and physio but it's not standard across the board.
But on the whole, nothing has changed. There have been a few recent posts where people have not had the basic assessments, CT scan and sensory tests after a head injury. So it may even be getting worse.
As a more recent injured person (January this year) my sense was that there was very little interest in following through on any possible impacts of my injury.
I initially went to walk-in clinic in North London where I was given a quite detailed balance and cranial nerve check. As there are no X-Ray or CT facilities at walk-in centres, I was advised to go to an A&E department if I still had headaches after 48 hours.
I attended A&E at Barnet General and was given a CT scan and a wrist x-ray as there was some pain in my left wrist following the fall.
These both came back clear and I was told to take painkillers, but not prescribed anything by the A&E doctor. I called my GP the next day and was prescribed Co-Codamol 500/10 for the immediate management of head pain.
That was the entire extent of my involvement with any NHS Services.
I'm not sure why the government responded that data collection was inadequate though; my health record has an entry made by the A&E staff which says' Concussion injury of brain'.
If they were even trying to pretend they were tracking, this is hardly a difficult element to report on, presumably it even has an incident code associated with it...
It seems very clear that there is absolutely no interest in keeping track of these stats most likely in the interests of plausible deniability of the real impacts of chronic conditions on overall population health.
It could be many reasons. A concussion may not be classed as a brain injury; a clear CT scan means no brain injury has been found. To collect data a central diagnostic procedure needs to be in place, health authorities have different head injury protocols. This was all pointed out by the WHO in 2004 because without a central diagnostic protocol, and a definition of what non-acute brain injuries are, they cannot be calculated in global stats.
Brain injuries that can be recorded via scans and blood tests etc are recorded globally.
As the gov could not answer how many ABI were recorded and treated in the UK may mean like you say there is no system in place to collect the information. The strategy was a fudge to silence voices and yes maybe there was no real intention to do anything.
But there was that funding last summer for developing a new system for diagnosing and treating brain injury. May be a system for collecting data will come from this.
Yes, it has been painfully obvious that from the hope that Chris Bryants private members Bill would start the ball rolling, it has been painfully quiet.
(Was the knighthood that Bryant received on account of his raising this topic or for something else?).
Anyway, we can but hope, as well as lobby for change.
Chris seems to be genuine, however if you follow his Facebook page his constituents are ripping him to bits. That's about local issues though, Chris is a labour MP on the national level, but Labour control Wales in many areas such as health. If you consider Wales has the worse healthcare in the UK then by extension what will happen when they take over in England next year after the election. Plaid Cymru, (the party of Wales) keep outing scandals from health system budgets. I remember a few years ago Leanne Wood the then leader of Plaid outed the Labour controlled Welsh assembly (Carwen Jones) for diverting 17% of the heath budget to bribe Tata Steel to stay in Wales and not shut down the Port Talbot steel works. The health system has been on it's last legs ever since.
Sorry off on a tangent but if you pay attention to politics and public services there are very strange coincidences.
Both Leanne Wood and Carwen Jones had to resign within a year 'for personal reasons.' It was because Leanne crossed a line and Carwen was caught out subsiding (bribing) Tata steel.
At least he asked the question... Don't forget MPs do work cross party.Make sure you ask your prospective parliamentary candidates about this at election time, and meanwhile email your MP.
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To all brain injury specialists...
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