A HOSPITAL consultant has warned that patients lives are being put at risk because of threats and intimidation of doctors and nurses. In one case yesterday, men claiming to be from the UDA ordered doctors at a north Belfast surgery to close early.
Prof Garth McClure of the Royal Maternity Hospital in Belfast said should anyone die because of such threats, unionist and Orange leaders dictating the widespread protests would have to justify their actions.
Lives were being put at risk because doctors were being turned away at some of the barricades. Prof McClure said that at night doctors who covered a number of hospitals were experiencing difficulty getting from one to another.
One doctor travelling to a Belfast hospital for an emergency case was told "You shall not pass", said Prof McClure. In another case, a nurse who was going to work in intensive care was ordered to return home.
"My message to these thugs is get off the road. If doctors and nurses can't go to work, this country is on the slippery slope to anarchy. It will be a new Croatia," he said.
Quite clearly, patients' lives were being put at risk, he added. "If this continues, eventually some doctor will not arrive on time and some patient will die. It will then be up to the unionist parties and the Orange Order to justify that".
Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for the Blood Transfusion Service in Northern Ireland said it was having difficulty getting supplies through the loyalist blockades at a time when blood supplies were in demand.
