3 YEARS TO END SHAME OF MIXED SEX WARDS.

THE Government is to spend pounds 4.2million to get rid of mixed-sex wards in Scotland.

Hospitals have been given three years to make wards all-male or all-female.

Despite Labour's manifesto pledge to scrap mixed wards, more than half of Scotland's health trusts still use such facilities in hospitals.

Scottish Health Minister Sam Galbraith yesterday acknowledged that mixed wards put extra stress on people already worried and vulnerable through illness.

He said: "I recognise the existence of mixed-sex wards can cause great distress to some patients, particularly the elderly and those in mental health wards.

"Patients need and deserve to be treated in conditions of privacy, safety and dignity."

Mr Galbraith said more than 90 per cent of patients were already guaranteed a bed on a single-sex ward.

A working group set up last year found half of hospitals still used mixed wards, two years after ministers promised to stamp them out.

Of 47 Scottish hospital trusts asked, 43 responded to the survey.

Twenty-five of them admitted male and female patients still shared sleeping, toilet and washing facilities in some wards, including cancer units and long-stay wards for the elderly and mentally ill.

Three said they had no mixed sex wards, and 15 said mixed areas were limited to small, specialised wards or that their facilities met single-sex rules.

Only Raigmore in Inver-ness, Dundee Healthcare NHS Trust and Dumfries and Galloway Acute and Maternity NHS Trust fulfilled the "no mixed sex" rule.

The British Medical Association, Royal College of Nursing and patients' groups all want to end mixed wards.

Patricia Dawson of the Scottish Association of Health Councils, which represents patients, said: "Many of them are horrified at the prospect of being in close proximity to members of the opposite sex while ill."

Health Secretary Frank Dobson has pledged pounds 40million to create single sex wards in England, where the situation is worse than here.

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Author:	McLEAN, JIM
Publication:	Daily Record (Glasgow, Scotland)
Date:	Apr 8, 1999
Words:	315
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