I am honoured to have received the Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society Awards 2017 UK ‘Political Supporter of the Year’ Award.
North Wales engagements included Chairing MS Society’s Llandudno conference and meeting the Chairman of Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board.
Questioning the Health Secretary following reports that the quality of care for dementia patients on Glan Clwyd Hospital’s Tawel Fan ward may have contributed to at least seven deaths, I noted that although our Health Board stated that immediate action was taken after they were made aware of serious concerns in December 2013, I had written in 2009 on behalf of a constituent who told me that the treatment received by her husband and others in the unit nearly killed them.
I also asked him to provide other prevention interventions alongside ‘PrEP’ following his announcement of an all-Wales ‘PrEP’ trial to reduce the risk of people becoming HIV positive.
Questioning the First Minister over his agreement to consider a business case for a new Bangor Medical School, I asked how he will ensure that this includes dialogue with Liverpool, to ensure that we ‘keep local medics local’. It is three years since the North Wales Local Medical Committee warned that General Practice in North Wales was facing crisis. Although many of their generation of GPs came from Liverpool Medical School, this supply had largely been severed.
I called for a Welsh Government Statement on vaginal mesh implants after a North Wales constituent told me that she had a mesh implant here in 2014 and has ‘since suffered badly from left hip pain, left thigh pain, pelvic pain and intimate pain, as one of several thousand women across the UK who are suffering from these implants’.
Questioning the Local Government Secretary, I highlighted concern raised with me by young people trained as peer educators for a young people’s sex and relationship education project on Anglesey, that although the Project’s April 2017 end-of-year report concluded that young people need this ‘as much, if not more, than ever’, neither Betsi Cadwaladr Health Board nor Anglesey Council appear to have made any effort ‘to maintain this valued project’.
Assembly engagements included meeting Broughton Primary School, Voices from Care, Arriva Trains Wales and Network Rail, Cross Party Group on Tourism, and Wales Council for Deaf People and Wales Council of the Blind ‘5 Star Awards’.