Yesterday, Jeremy Hunt downgraded Stafford hospital.  This means that mothers who suffer life threatening complications in labour and critically ill children will have to travel twenty miles to the nearest consultant led maternity or twenty-four hour paediatrics department. In his written statement to the House of Commons, the Health Secretary did state:

'I am asking NHS England to identify whether consultant-led obstetrics could be sustained at Mid Staffs in a safe way in the future. In doing this, NHS England will work with local commissioners as part of their wider review of the local health economy.'

Although this is a welcome statement, it is not  a pledge and only guarantees yet another assessment from yet another health body.  Furthermore, it beggars the question as to how you can have a fully functioning consultant-led maternity department while reducing the number of critical care beds?    

At a recent meeting Stafford and Surrounds Clinical Commissioning Group were unable to guarantee that critically ill patients could make it to alternative hospitals in time to avoid a tragedy. 

To make matters worse, West-Midlands ambulance service is so overstretched that it could take over twenty minutes before critical cases can even begin their dangerous twenty mile journeys, the duration of which will be at the mercy of the British traffic.  Indeed, only last week a Stafford man died following a heart attack which wasn't attended by an ambulance for twenty-one minutes.  It was another twenty-three minutes before he arrived at the University Hospital of North Staffordshire - because Stafford’s A and E has been closed overnight.  Albert Bowen's daughter’s said:

"It is upsetting that it took as long as it did for West Midlands Ambulance Service to get to him. We can't fault the care our father received at UHNS, but we can't help wondering if he had been taken five minutes down the road to Stafford Hospital whether the outcome might have been different.  We will never know. That is a question we will be asking ourselves for the rest of our lives.”

Not only have the Trust Special Administrator's proposals to downgrade Stafford hospital failed to demonstrate that the people there will be transferring to an equal or better service than the one they currently enjoy, but they do not even have the support of local GPs, the people who should, under the Health and Social Care Act of 2012, have the final say over any change to services.   In a ballot of local GPs, eighty-one percent declined to support the TSA proposals, despite the local CCG claiming to have achieved a consensus that Stafford hospital should be downgraded.          

Now Jeremy Hunt has downgraded Stafford, no district general hospital in the land will be safe from closure.  Basically, it’s Stafford hospital today, your hospital tomorrow.  So please, take this opportunity to show solidarity with the people of Stafford before it’s too late and call on the Secretary of State for Health and the Stafford and Surrounds Clinical Commissioning Group not to endanger life by removing their vital acute services.  

Let’s support Stafford Hospital!  Let’s save the NHS!