today that Central Middlesex Accident and Emergency ward is to be closed will come as a bitter disappointment to Brent health campaigners, particularly after the euphoria which greeted the Lewisham Hospital campaign's court victory yesterday.
Hunt's decision shows that that the Tories have absolutely no understanding of the needs of an area such as Harlesden/Stonebridge and the social and health inequalities that make an easily accessible local facility so important.
Campaigners will be considering next steps along with those fighting for Hammermith hospital but meanwhile after the announcement it is even more important that as many people as possible submit evidence to the People's Inquiry into the London Health Service. Details
and attend the local meeting of the Inquiry which will be held. Send your views using this
This is the trenchant evidence to the Inquiry submitted by Harlesden resident Sarah Cox:
I am a 76 year-old retired early
years teacher. I worked
for more than 30 years in Brent schools and have lived for
more than 40 years
in Harlesden. I am also an outpatient at Central Middlesex
Hospital.
As such, I was extremely
concerned about the likely
effect of the changes enshrined in the Shaping a Healthier
Future consultation
and also about the consultation itself.
I followed the consultation
carefully, read the
documents and attended meetings called by NHS NW London and
public meetings
organised by local health campaigns. Overall, the
consultation was more like a
public relations exercise. Its questionnaire was designed to
reach a desired
conclusion rather than to look at the real health needs of
the vast area it
covers.
I am very concerned about
accountability. NHS NW
London made the decision to go ahead with the changes, but
went out of
existence before the process of introducing them had even
begun. Who will be
accountable if they turn out, as many of us believe they
will, to result in
damaging cuts to our health services, rather than
improvements?
Although I will concentrate on
the
likely effects of changes to the area in which I live, I
believe that all
the changes will have knock-on effects on neighbouring areas
and I am strongly
opposed to the whole package. My husband was referred from
Central Middlesex
Hospital where he was diagnosed with laryngeal cancer, to
Charing X where
he was expertly treated. The co operation between the two
hospitals was
exemplary. Cuts to any of the hospitals will increase the
strain on the others
and on the ambulance service.
I believe that the case for
fewer specialist
hospitals further apart has been made for stroke, heart
attacks and some
serious injuries and services have been developed in line
with that. Ambulance
crews know the best place to take such patients and expert
paramedics are able
to stabilise them before transporting them to the best
hospital. However, I do
not believe that the extrapolation to other conditions such
as serious
asthma attacks, is justified. The surgeons want a
concentration of
expensive high-tech facilities in fewer, larger hospitals.
What they
ignore is the vital importance to patients' recovery of
being in a setting that
is accessible to friends and relatives. There has been a
great deal of
publicity recently about poor standards of care on
understaffed wards. The best
insurance against inadequate care is the vigilance of
patients' families.
In fact, although we are told
that the plans are
based on clinical evidence, they are really based on a
desire to cut costs. It
the plans go through, nearly 1,000 beds and 3,994 clinical
jobs will go from
hospitals in NW London, saving £1billion over three years.
The remaining hospitals
will not be able to cope, the ambulance service will not be
able to cope,
the 111 service is already inadequate and yet we are told
that it is crucial to
the success of providing alternative services in the
community.
One of the declared aims of
the Shaping a Healthier
Future strategy was to reduce health inequalities,
but moving health
provision away from the areas of greatest deprivation and
lowest life
expectancy, will in fact increase health inequalities.
As a resident of Harlesden Ward
and having
worked on the Stonebridge Estate, I am most concerned with
the loss of
services at Central Middlesex Hospital and the impact on the
people of
Harlesden, Stonebridge and the surrounding area. The Brent
Joint Strategic
Needs Assessment and in particular the Harlesden Locality
Profile (accessible
through the Brent Council website www.brent.gov.uk) shows that Harlesden and
Stonebridge wards are
among the 10% of most deprived wards in the country. They
have high levels of
unemployment and of long term disease and disability. They
also have a
higher than average birth rate, and a larger than average
percentage of young
children and large families and higher rates of teenage
pregnancy. Yet the
maternity and paediatric services have been taken away.
Areas of poverty and poor
housing like these have,
it is widely recognised, higher levels of respiratory
disease and mental
health problems among other health problems. The government
welfare cuts will
increase these problems.
If health inequalities are to
be overcome, health
services should be provided where the need is greatest. If
access to health
services is difficult, people living in poverty and facing
many other problems
are less likely to seek help and relatively minor problems
can become more
serious.
Some of the reasons why it is
wrong to close A
& E departments at CMH and Ealing (these arguments apply
to other hospitals
in areas of deprivation):
·
A & E
services are the first port of call for patients with mental
illnesses and they
are likely to find it harder to travel further for help.
·
When
patients attend A & E, other problems e.g. cancer are
often detected and
can be treated before they become more serious.
· There is no simple public
transport link from the
Harlesden or Stonebridge areas nor from Central Middlesex
Hospital to
Northwick Park and cabs are far too expensive for people
dependent on
benefits, so people who are taken ill or have an accident
themselves or whose
children are taken ill or have an accident will be forced to
call an
ambulance adding to the pressure on the ambulance service.
· Transport difficulties not only
affect patients,
they make it hard for family and friends to visit patients.
Support and
care from family and friends are important for helping
patients to recover.
Negotiations with TfL even on the simple extension of the 18
bus route to
Northwick Park Hospital have been unsuccessful, so patients
and their families
and friends from the area around CMH will continue to find
access to Northwick
Park extremely difficult.
Northwick Park is already
struggling to meet
targets and ambulances are being diverted back to CMH from
there and from St
Mary's. If all the proposed closures go through, how will
Northwick Park
cope with the added burden on A & E maternity,
paediatric services, surgery
and intensive care?
Getting
information about the CCG’s commissioning decisions before
they are made is
extremely difficult. There are massive documents with
quantities of acronymic
alphabet soup and a hierarchy of meetings, some useful, most
completely opaque
to the interested patient or campaigner and suddenly, before
you know it,
another service has been outsourced and privatised.
However
often we are assured that the changes to the NHS are
clinically driven, it
seems clear that the real drivers are financial the
transformation of the NHS into
a cash cow for the private sector so that even if it remains
free at the point
of use for patients, it will be run for profit.
Sarah Cox
