Workers Revolutionary Party - STOP THIS CLOSURE! – Maidstone Hospital A&E threatened

The News Line: News Monday, 4 December 2006 STOP THIS CLOSURE! – Maidstone Hospital A&E threatened

UNISON general secretary DAVE PRENTIS (centre) at the NHS Together lobby of parliament on November 1st

A senior consultant at Maidstone Hospital in Kent last Saturday publicly announced that he has resigned his managerial post because of plans to close the hospital’s A&E department.

Joined by fellow consultants, Tony Hulse, a paediatrician for 18 years at Maidstone Hospital, told a 2,500-strong rally: ‘I obviously couldn’t stand up in public if I was part of the management structure.’

Hulse slammed plans to transfer the Maidstone A&E to a new trauma centre at the Kent and Sussex Hospital in Tunbridge Wells.

The consultant said: ‘The Trust has huge financial problems which can’t be denied, but if you look logically at where you should site your acute services they should be where the largest population is.

‘They are proposing to move them to a hospital that is far removed from the motorways, is in a town centre and so is very inaccessible, is very old, and also it doesn’t have a helicopter pad.’

Hulse resigned as deputy medical director at the Trust on Friday, but will retain his post as consultant.
He concluded: ‘I felt I had very little influence in these plans and so there seemed little point in carrying on.’

Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust, which runs hospitals in Maidstone, Pembury and Tunbridge Wells, also plans to transfer its maternity unit to Pembury Hospital.

Protests against NHS cuts also took place last Saturday in Chertsey, Surrey, and Hatfield and Stevenage in Hertfordshire.

Last Friday, patients and staff from Worthing, Hastings, Eastbourne, Chichester, Haywards Heath and Brighton lobbied against cuts outside a health summit meeting of the South East Coast Strategic Health Authority (SHA) in Brighton.

• Public sector union UNISON is calling on Chancellor Brown to make more funding available to help NHS Trusts tackle financial deficits, when he gives his pre-Budget report this week.