Health Watch

IT’S an unforgivable gamble with people’s lives – and it is being played out right here in Ipswich and Suffolk.

 

Heath bosses - the very people who are paid to save us at a time of critical need - stand accused of putting policy dogma before patient safety.

 

In one of the most baffling decisions ever taken in the tortuous recent history of NHS care in Suffolk, serious heart attack patients will no longer be taken to local their, world-class, accident and emergency department in Ipswich. 

 

By day or terrifying middle of the night, from Bawdsey to Bramford, Rushmere to Ravenswood, Felixstowe to Framlingham, the heart victims will pass by Heath Road Hospital in Ipswich, to endure a 60-mile 999 dash for life before treatment begins.

 

With their chances of survival decreasing with every minute, the bemused victims will from June onwards no longer be treated by paramedics and Ipswich Hospital's top team.

 

Your Evening Star, which uncovered this scandal and has hammered home the full details – says stop this madness now, before time runs out, and before a single life is lost on the nightmare road that is A140. 

 

The proposals, dreamed up by health bureaucrats in the distant Strategic Health Authority in Cambridge and the little-known Specialised Commissioning Group, have caused outrage. 

 

They have been drawn up without speaking to the people that matter - the patients - and we call on all parties to join our crusade to stop the move in its tracks to allow for full consultation. 

 

Local lives are at risk here – and the battle should be joined by one and all.