A&E Closures

Since the announcement of the closure of Monklands A&E, many people have given up hope.They feel that it was a ‘done deal’; that the decision was taken long before the public consultation started. ‘Why should we bother campaigning; it’ll turn out the same anyway,’
some say. But it needn’t be like that.

The A&E decision can be reversed by central government

Forget about the health board; the people with the money and power to reverse this decision are the politicians at Holyrood. As long as Monklands is still operating as a full A&E general hospital,(which it will until 2009) the closure can be reversed. But we must make sure that we the voters, pressure our politicians until they do this.

The battle for Monklands is a battle for all hospitals in Scotland.

We are not the only area suffering from hospital closures. Across Scotland, centralisation of services is leading to the closure of many A&Es. Ayr, Livingston and Dunfermline are having their A&Es shut; in Glasgow, the Victoria, the Western and Stobhill A&Es are being removed. Yorkhill Hospital and the Queen Mother’s hospital are to be shut, and the facilities built beside the Southern General. The lucrative west end sites that they stood on are being sold off to private developers.

The reason that there has not been more reporting on this is because the process of consultation on the closures has been staggered. Ayrshire and Arran Health Board went through the consultation process last year; Lanarkshire Health Board went through it this year and the process is just starting in Glasgow. The hospitals are being picked off health board by health board to minimise public protest and we cannot sit back and allow it to happen or we will be left without a health service.

The NHS is part of our ethos as a civilised country

In every generation, there are moments of conflict, where people of a nation have to ask themselves what they stand for and what they believe in. The generation that gave us the NHS were the war generation, who endured hardship and horrors that we can only imagine now. They decided for us, that they did not want a future where only the fittest survived and the rest were discarded. They did not want people dying of preventable diseases, because they were too poor to afford a doctor. They wanted a future where everyone would have access to education and health, regardless of status and that health would be a public service, not a private business.

We are at such a moment now and we have to ask ourselves the same question; do we want a country where the poor, the sick and the old are ignored? Do we want a country where only the rich have access to good health care, or do we want a universal health service, the NHS which was so hard won and handed on to us by the last generation? If we believe in free access to health care, then we must act NOW. The NHS is being quietly dismembered and sold off to the private sector, piece by piece; if we do not protest now, there will be nothing left for our children.