Calls to protect Sheffield NHS services for people with Long Covid
Funding for the long Covid service - run by Sheffield Teaching Hospitals - is uncertain
Sheffielders whose lives have been impacted by the long-term effects of Covid-19 are worried about the future of a city specialist rehabilitation hub.
Several members of the public asked questions about the future of the Long Covid Rehabilitation Hub run by Sheffield Teaching Hospitals and raised related issues at a meeting of Sheffield health and wellbeing board last week (March 27). They are worried that services will dry up as ring-fenced NHS funding for them ends.
A moving recording made by a young woman called Fran described the drastic changes to her life from being an active person, working as a vet.
She said: “One Covid infection rapidly left me confined to a dark room, unable to sit up, walk to the toilet or even open my eyes for more than a few seconds, due to relentless and tortuous symptoms.” Fatigue, weakness and pain left her barely able to move and unable even to read for more than a year.
Still very seriously affected, she described her frustration at people who think Long Covid is “just a bit of tiredness”. Fran told how some friends had taken their own lives because of the severity of their symptoms and the pain they lived with.
The meeting also heard about a Long Covid Project jointly run by Healthwatch Sheffield and Voluntary Action Sheffield (VAS). It looked at how to start tackling the barriers facing people who struggle to access NHS services for Long Covid, especially people from ethnically diverse and poorer communities.
Dr Zak McMurray, a GP and director of the NHS South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board responded to the questions. He said that the limited resources of the NHS have to be used in the best way.
Dr McMurray suggested that care for people with Long Covid could become part of a wider service for a range of chronic fatigue conditions when the ring-fenced funding ends. He said it is important that new services are co-designed with people who will be using them.
Lucy Davies from Healthwatch said that the Long Covid Project looked at “actions to do better for many people like Fran whose lives have been impacted by Long Covid”.
Natasha Munoz, who led the project for VAS, said that the low number of BME people getting treatment for Long Covid is linked to other health inequalities.
She described how they ran a community grants programme that allowed them to work with 15 community organisations and talk to 440 people to highlight gaps in information about Long Covid.
As a result, they produced 21 information resources in a variety of formats and languages. Organisations delivered the information resources to approximately 20,000 people living in Sheffield through events and information services, she said.
Natasha said people told the project they had to battle to be heard. “People said it’s exhausting. It’s also something not everybody can do.”
One carer with a learning disability said they struggled to be taken seriously, said Natasha. Lucy Davies said that one person found that their GP refused to refer them to the Long Covid service.
Iolanthe Fowler from Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS said that the Long Covid hub has constantly changed in reaction to feedback. Staff take a ‘what matters to you’ approach to patients when designing their care, including supporting people with their employers or taking up new jobs.
“The essential question is what happens as we look at the service,” she said.
Committee chair Coun Angela Argenzio said that many big employers such as the council, city universities and police are represented on the board. She said they need to ensure that staff who have Long Covid are supported in their roles.
City council chief executive Kate Josephs said that could be linked to a major project on Pathways to Work being run by South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority.