Dear Mr Cameron,
Please find a petition containing more than 12,500 signatures against the proposed closure of A&E, ICU and other vital services at Trafford General Hospital, birthplace of the NHS.
Local people are worried about the impact of these cuts on their health and future welfare. They are not alone.
Conservative-controlled Trafford Council has voted unanimously against the plans, uniting all political parties in defence of local NHS services. So has the borough’s Health Scrutiny Committee.
Almost 1,000 people have signed an on-line petition, another 900 people have voted to save A&E, ICU, children’s services and acute surgery at Trafford General Hospital at our web site www.savetraffordgeneral.com
And 500-plus people have joined our Facebook campaign https://www.facebook.com/SaveTraffordNHS
But that’s not enough for health commissioners in Trafford.
They are intent on ignoring the wishes of local people and elected members of the council to press ahead with these reckless and dangerous cuts.
Their public consultation has been fundamentally flawed – local people have been presented with a single option of cuts. And commissioners have been woefully incompetent in failing to engage and involve local people, even managing to fail to send their consultation document to every home in the borough, as they had promised. Thousands of local people have not been properly consulted.
Trafford Council has written to the previous and new Secretary of State demanding that they intervene in this consultation process.
Now we are appealing to you to step in and take action to protect local people from this attack on our local hospital, the birthplace of our NHS.
Health Commissioners won’t listen to us – we hope they will listen to you.
We are asking you to forward this petition to Trafford’s health commissioners as a matter of urgency before the public consultation ends on October 31st.
We are also appealing to you to stand up for local democracy, local people and local NHS services.
Yours sincerely,
Matthew Finnegan
Chair, Save Trafford General community campaign
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3 comments
Volunteer at Trafford General
25/10/2012 at 11:27 am (UTC 1) Link to this comment
Jeremy
I feel it depends on how you interpret better care A nurse with fewer pateints to look after is more likely to notice small yet significant changes i.e. attention in a smaller unit where pateints are treated as people and not numbers This awareness can lead to a decrease in recovery time hence less time in hospital allowing for an increase in number of pateints who can be seen . I say pateints as we are talking about living people and not just figures on a stastical table. I have been to a meeting recently on transport to hospitals and the times were petrifying . Please remember at the end of the day the NHS was set up to look after people from ‘the cradle to the grave’ NOT until heartless ministers decided their salary and retirement benefits were more important than care.
admin
19/10/2012 at 10:01 pm (UTC 1) Link to this comment
Jeremy, do you really think there will be better outcomes for patients if it takes longer for patients to travel to other hospitals to receive the care they need? And that, when they arrive, they will face longer queues for treatment? That’s the reality of these cuts. It sounds very much as though you are either a commissioner, or have unthinkingly swallowed the commissioners spin machine. Cant you see that patients will wait longer for accident and emergency treatment at other hospitals? No one is arguing against specialist centres, but we are talking about A&E – its a very different service and something that local people have a right to demand is available locally.
Jeremy Bailey
18/10/2012 at 12:09 am (UTC 1) Link to this comment
It’s not my fight, on either side, but this letter contains nothing that argues against the proposals on the grounds of better outcomes for patients. And if it did I’d want some proper evidence. Generally I think it is well established that you get the best care in larger centres where doctors see more cases. Especially for stroke, maternity, and ICU