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A Finsbury Park café owner has said his faith in the NHS has been crushed after he was turned away from the Whittington’s emergency department with severe burns.

Hussein Jaber, 52, who runs Gadz café in Clifton Terrace – known for its Jeremy Corbyn-themed wall – attended the hospital’s A&E department in the middle of the night but was asked by nurses if he could come back at 9am, despite having waited for five hours already.

“I had never seen this in my life,” said Lebanon-born Mr Jaber.


“People in my home country say that treatment is the best in England, they are jealous that I live here. But now, I don’t even get letters from my GP anymore. The whole system is going down, I think.”

Mr Jaber suffered the second-degree burns on Sunday July 10 after two cups of boiling water fell over him at his café, leaving him with a large and painful section of “bubbling” skin.

After several hours of trying to deal with the pain and treating his injuries himself, friends encouraged Mr Jaber to attend the Archway hospital. He arrived and was assessed by a nurse at 9.45pm that evening, and given pain killers.

However, after a five-hour wait, the 11 patients left waiting, including the café owner, were told by nurses they could not be treated, he claims.

Mr Jaber said: “I asked the nurses: ‘What do you mean you are closed? Is there a mistake, is this a supermarket or a hospital?’ ”

He added: “I burnt nearly half my stomach, it was terrible but I was OK coping with the pain. But there was a six-month-old boy there and I was worried about him. And what if someone had been stabbed with a knife?

“I could not believe it. I was in hospital in Lebanon when it was bombed by Israel and even then the hospital did not close.”

The following day, Mr Jaber tried to ring his GP but was put on hold for more 40 minutes and then cut off. He claims he was later told the earliest appointment he could get was in three weeks.

“I’m sorry to say I still respect this country, but I feel the health system is going down, the treatment is getting worse,” he added.

“They should not save money on these things, because it’s about saving people’s lives.”

A spokeswoman for the Whittington Hospital denied that the A&E unit had ever closed, but admitted that an “unprecedented” number of attendances presented a “real challenge”.

“We are currently facing very high demand in our emergency department and this pressure is being experienced across the whole of London,” the spokeswoman said.

“This has been a real challenge and frontline clinical staff are doing their very best to manage these unprecedented number of attendances, although at times this has resulted in delays for some patients with urgent care needs.

“We apologise unreservedly to patients for any delays due to the significant rise in attendances at our emergency department.

“We would also like to reassure patients that the department has not closed at any time during this past week and that there are always doctors on duty, 24 hours a day, at the hospital.”