Market brings scanner scandal

Socialist Resistance no21 | page 6

This is scanned newsprint, not web text. The original PDFs carried no text layer at all, so every word here was read off the page by OCR. Expect dropped opening letters, run-together words and wrong characters. There was no contents page to cut the paper up by, so the articles were found from the size of their headlines: a headline may carry its kicker, and where an article ran beside a boxed panel a few lines of the neighbour can appear. The scanned issue is the authority; this text is here so the words can be found at all.

MRI scanners purchased as part of a modernisation of NHS facilities are standing idle in many hospitals, "mothballed" as a result of the lack of funding for staff to operate them. So says the College of Radiographers, which has protested strongly against the government's more recent decision to commission 12 mobile scanners, to be run by the private sector (Alliance Medical with a view to reducing waiting lists across the country.

According to the College, the NHS has bought 42 new MRI scanners, and announced a further £90m programme to replace scanners and CT scanners that are more than ten years old.

But the private provision has been decided centrally as an initiative to raise scanning capacity by 16 percent, delivering over 130,000 scans a year.

Nobody favours delays and queues for these vital tests: but does John Reid's left hand really know what his priva tised right hand is doing?