Alliance Health spokesperson Paula Bradshaw MLA has said the Health Minister has failed the people of Portadown by not ensuring Bannview Medical Practice in Portadown had a permanent GP in place.
Ms Bradshaw was speaking after the GP contractor resigned. Paula Bradshaw said: “The Health Minister is fully responsible for the current unacceptable pressures facing GPs and Primary Care centres right across the Region. I am aware that the British Medical Association and Royal College of General Practitioners have been continually raising the grave situation in the Portadown area, in this case with the Bannview Practice, since she came to office. The Health Minister has had eight months to intervene. It appears that her contribution just before Christmas came too little, too late.
“The pantomime politics of the last week, runs totally contrary to the empty pledges that the Health Minister repeated time and again in the Assembly Chamber over the last eight months. She has told the media that the public has ‘no faith in the Institutions’. I feel that she has to bear a large burden of blame for the wider populace viewing Stormont as being incapable of providing good government for the people of Northern Ireland. Health is one area of government that should have been prioritised by the current Executive, yet clearly was not.”