MANY of us will echo the experiences of Timothy Oates (Oxford Mail ViewPoints, April 24) with delays or cancellations of appointments or specialist consultations, of tests or treatment, before getting relief.

Attacks on the NHS, often privatisation under stealth, have gone on under successive governments.

Let us prioritise our needs and save the NHS while there is still time, for it is a very ailing patient.

For those determined to profit from suffering by misnamed “reform”, a few days and sleepless nights spent in the admissions department of A&E at the John Radcliffe Hospital might be instructive.

Patients with a variety of urgent, sometimes difficult, conditions are in beds open to view at all times by the doctors and nurses (and vice versa).

The staff are on the move the whole time, attending to patients, monitoring screens after tests, doctors having to write up case notes while standing (there are no seats).

Their over-work to fill staff shortages, their fatigue and anxiety about their future in the NHS, are hidden behind the devoted calm, personal caring they give for each patient.

What is called reform is a barbaric practice from the past, motivated by greed to profit from suffering – death by a thousand cuts.

DOROTHY BIRTLES, Holley Crescent, Headington, Oxford