WE all agree that Wales needs a National Health Service that is fit for the twenty-first century.

However, Wales currently has the worst doctor to population ratio in the UK and one of the worst across the whole of the European Union.

It doesn’t have to be like this.

Plaid Cymru’s plans will increase the number of doctors in Wales by 1,000 to bring us up to the UK average.

This is a ‘Wales can’ approach, in contrast to the Welsh Government’s proposals to remove core services across Wales, because they think that Wales can’t.

These doctors can be provided through a number of means. We could do this by providing financial incentives, such as additional bursaries or paying off tuition fees to doctors who stay in Wales and work in hard-to-fill posts.

We can also increase the amount of medical research in Wales and attract greater research funding, bringing well-known specialists to Wales.

We should increase the capacity of our medical schools to train more doctors and encourage more of our young people to go into medicine as well as staying in Wales.

In the short term, to get the numbers up, we should be working to attract well-qualified doctors from elsewhere in the EU to help treat our elderly and sick while our next generation of doctors are being trained.

Wales should have a twenty-first century NHS, but it will only get one if it has a Plaid Cymru government which believes that Wales can.

Cllr Ian Johnson

Plaid Cymru - the Party of Wales

Gladstone Road

Barry