WORTHING HOSPITAL: KWASH response

Claims of "victory" by certain local minority groups, who have been entirely detached from the efforts to save our hospital services, are misplaced and an insult to colleagues at St Richards, who face bearing the brunt of the PCT's reconfiguration.

The truth is that there are no winners in this process, only potential losers across our county.

As we have said all along, the reconfiguration exercise was unwelcome and unneeded when we have three excellent hospitals already, coping for an ageing and growing population in a county with notoriously bad transport links.

We cautioned at the outset that it was never in the interests of residents of Worthing for St Richards to lose vital services and visa-versa, and that remains the case now.

It is important that we all now work closely with our colleagues at Chichester, both clinical and political, to make sure that residents across the county continue to enjoy as high a level of health services as possible, whilst scrutinising the process that got us to this stage.

It is likely that the whole consultation process will be referred to the Independent Reconfiguration Panel and it will therefore be some months longer before the final decisions are confirmed.

But be in no doubt, the future of Worthing has been secured by people power.

The people of Worthing, Adur and Arun did us proud and joined the KWASH campaign in their thousands.

Patients, clinicians, councillors and businesses came together in common cause and forced the PCT to change their proposals and review the evidence.

Without this we could have faced most of our hospitals losing their A&E departments altogether or even no major hospital within the county boundaries at all.

The strength of the campaign made a difference every step of the way.

Given the continued stages to got through, the KWASH committee will now be scaling down our activities at least until the final decisions are confirmed.

After that, as promised any spare funds will be donated to the League of Friends.

We sincerely hope that the residents of West Sussex do not have to go through this whole unsettling process again in the future, not least the hospital staff who have faced uncertainty over their jobs for almost two years now.

Major Tom Wye (Chairman KWASH)

Ron Noakes (Treasurer KWASH)

Tim Loughton MP

Peter Bottomley MP

Click here for more on the Save Our Hospitals campaign.

-------------------------------------

Click here to go back to Worthing news.

Where are you? Add your pin to the Herald's international readers' map by clicking here.

Email the Herald: [email protected]