UK News 04-03-2005 The Battle Of Margaret`s Shoulder who: 69 year-old shoulder surgery patient Margaret Dixon what: Plays piggy-in-the-middle as political parties debate NHS efficiency where: Warrington District General Hospital, WARRINGTON when: This week snippet: "The disputed medical history of a 69-year-old floating voter ricocheted around the political battleground between Labour and Conservatives [on Thursday]," says The Guardian, "as they fought for electoral advantage over their record of running the national health service." "It began when Margaret Dixon`s shoulder operation was postponed yet again, prompting her husband to complain to the ambitious local councillor," says a report from The Independent`s Ian Herbert and Andrew Grice on Friday. "It culminated yesterday in an extraordinary political slanging match, as the Tory claims and Labour counter-claims became the first shots fired in fury ahead of the general election." "Mrs Dixon, of Penketh, Cheshire, has had her operation for a broken shoulder cancelled seven times, according to the Tories," reports Sky News. "But the hospital involved, Warrington District General, says there were only three cancellations." However, that may depend on your definition of a cancellation. In The Times, health editor Nigel Hawkes explains that "cancellations are only recorded if they are postponed on the day the procedure was due to take place". Predictably, he says, it is common practice for doctors to review forthcoming operations the day before "to avoid falling foul of Government guidelines". "Because she has a weak heart, [Mrs Dixon] has been told that her chances of surviving that operation are less than 50-50," Tory leader Michael Howard told the Commons on Wednesday. "On seven separate occasions she has been given a date for that operation and said goodbye to her family in case she did not survive." The next day, health secretary Dr John Reid visited the hospital in an attempt to regain the political high ground. "I came here because I had been contacted by staff and patients angry at what they heard from Mr Howard," he says, quoted in The Mirror. "The patients told me Mr Howard is speaking rubbish. There is a lot of anger among the staff, the doctors and the patients." The papers are as unequivocal and divided as the political parties. Mrs Dixon "is a genuine example of the structural flaws in our over-centralised National Health Service," according to The Telegraph. Unless you`re reading The Guardian, in which case "to take a single case - especially one as complex as Mrs Dixon`s - and suggest that her experience is in some way representative of the norm is a travesty of the facts and an insult to voters` intelligence". The Independent concludes that the row, as newspapers are fond of describing undignified debates such as this, says "more about the feverish pre-election atmosphere at Westminster than it does about the NHS". [... more]

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