Disabled people are having to rely on crowdfunding to pay for wheelchairs due to cuts in services, a postcode lottery of availability and delays.
Dr Hannah Barham-Brown, has told the British Medical Association’s annual representative meeting that “hundreds of patients” were fundraising online for their wheelchairs - and that she was one of them.
The junior doctor, who has Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (which means her joints dislocate easily), said:
"I had to crowdfund my wheelchair halfway through medical school when I was told that it was going to cost around 2,000 to get this chair and the NHS were able to offer me a 140 voucher or an NHS chair which weighs up to 20 kilos and is very bad, and not remotely ergonomic.
That was ultimately going to do me more harm than good so my best friend set up a crowdfunding page for me and managed to raise 2,000 in 24 hours. The standard NHS chair can weigh up to around 20 kilos and it's very poorly designed - it's not remotely ergonomic. NHS chairs are very heavy and very hard to manoeuvre easily. In terms of public transport, I wouldn't be able to go anywhere in an NHS chair unless there was someone with me helping me. You need to be pushed.”
Dr Barham-Brown added that:
“More and more I'm seeing on social media pleas from people begging for support to buy wheelchairs, not only chairs like this - lightweight self-propelling chairs - but electric chairs.
The guidelines for getting chairs now are so strict, wheelchair services across the country are being privatised and it's just getting harder and harder to get access. Muscular Dystrophy UK recently did a report on this and said that there seems to be a postcode lottery happening around the country”.
Ken Butler, DR UK’s member organisations welfare rights adviser said:
“Simply in itself, the fact that disabled people are having to resort to crowdfunding to obtain a wheelchair is appalling. Suitable wheelchairs for every disabled person who needs one should be equally and easily accessible across the UK and be supplied and funded by the NHS.
It is impossible for disabled people to either be independent or to be able to work unless they can be mobile.
But the problems disabled for people are compounded by the benefits system.
The work capability assessment can disbar someone from ESA on the supposed grounds that they are able a use a manual wheelchair – even if they never used one or have access to one. Which results in them having to sign on for JSA despite not having a wheelchair.
In addition, harsher PIP rules are resulting in 800 disabled people a week having to return their vital Motability cars with very many more losing essential financial support for extra transport costs."
