Buxton woman with serious eye condition issues urgent plea for more help for NHS

Age-related macular degeneration (AMD) is an eye disease that may get worse over time and is the leading cause of severe, permanent vision loss in people over 60.

It is caused when the small central portion of the retina, called the macula, wears down. While the condition doesn’t make sufferers go totally blind, it can see sight deteriorate so much it makes everyday activities very difficult.

Now Felicity Dobson is urging for more to be done to help those on NHS waiting lists across the country who are suffering with AMD – because of her own personal experience.

Felicity, 77, said: “It is imperative that it (AMD) is treated and assessed with regular follow ups.

“I coughed up £1,300 to be treated privately. I was lucky, I could afford it.

“Despite my very kind consultant promising me I would have follow up treatment four weeks later on the NHS, I was left on a waiting list to go blind.

“I'm not being a drama queen - this is what's happening everywhere. We are told ‘lack of capacity’.

“This is a desperate plea for very urgent help for the NHS, and its poor patients on waiting lists - especially those going blind.

“With the help of the Macular Society, my general practitioner, my former MP Ruth George, and probably because I wrote the most forceful of letters to the health authority concerned, I did get my treatment. However, I struggle to get a follow up on time.

“I have now been put on the waiting list three times - each time I have to nag, plead and beg to be taken off it and given an appointment.

“My heart bleeds for the poor staff who have to try and put all these urgent cases into a restricted number of slots whilst having to deal with very upset and frightened patients with AMD, desperate to get appointments on time.

“I'm 77, one of the front-runners of the baby boomers. What's it going to be like in a few years time when the NHS gets hit with the AMD boomers? I shudder to think, unless the NHS gets help here and now.

“We need a cross party Royal Commission urgently to look at how the NHS is going to work in the future.

“My plea is going to Robert Largan MP [for Buxton], Matt Hancock (Health Secretary), and (Prime Minister) Boris Johnson.”