Karen McKevitt: 'My hospital bed was blocking a fire door'

Politicians are responsible for the chaos happening inside hospitals, a former SDLP assembly member has said.

Karen McKevitt was speaking after seeing the crisis up close during four days in Newry's Daisy Hill Hospital, where she was treated for pneumonia.

All politicians, including herself and her party, have let health care workers down, Ms McKevitt said.

If Stormont does not return, she added, "politics should be taken out of health because people are dying".

Ms McKevitt is a Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) councillor on Newry, Mourne and Down Council who previously represented South Down in the assembly.

In an exclusive interview with BBC News NI from her home in Newry, she described witnessing chaos as she lay seriously ill in Daisy Hill Hospital.

She said she was in a makeshift ward and that her bed was blocking a fire door.

Read more here.