A leading Southend councillor who suffered a 24-hour wait at the town's hospital accident and emergency department has slammed the NHS.
Verina Weaver, the borough council's cabinet member with responsibility for health and social care, spent a night and day at Southend Hospital with acute abdominal pain.
Mrs Weaver says she waited 12 hours on a trolley in A&E before being transferred to an observation ward in another section of the department for a further 12-hour wait.
She was finally admitted to Eastwood ward at 4pm on October 5, by which time she had not eaten or drunk anything for 48 hours.
She said: "I am speaking out about it to show the system up.
"I was seen by a nurse who said I would be treated as a Code Yellow because they suspected appendicitis.
"This meant that I should have been seen by a doctor within an hour but I wasn't seen for three-and-a-half hours."
Conservative Mrs Weaver, of Burgess Road, Southend, who represents West Shoebury, finally had an operation, to drain ovarian cysts, four days later.
A Southend Hospital spokeswoman said: "We will be looking into the circumstances of this particular case."
Published Friday October 18, 2002
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