Thank You

Posted By: Jean Ashworth
Date Posted: 09/11/2010

Just to say a huge thank you to everyone who attended the Friends of Our Hospital public meeting at Rochdale Town Hall on the 4th November. Father Arthur Nearey the Chairman of the Friends wasn't able to attend as he has just had major surgery and is still an inpatient at the Rochdale Infirmary and as I had organised the meeting Father Nearey asked me to chair it.
The meeting was really well attended by around 300 people in fact I decided to move the meeting up into the Great Hall to accommodate everyone and I would like to thank and congratulate the Town Hall Staff on duty for their help and support in making this meeting such a success by helping to move such a large number of people upstairs.

Not one person agreed with the new proposals decided by the Pennine Acute to bring forward the closures by 12 months of certain wards and services of the Maternity, Children’s and A&E which they had decided on earlier the same day without any consultation with the Staff, Public, Council or Health Overview & Scrutiny committee, it is everyone’s opinion that these moves are unsafe for the population of our borough.

We heard our A&E department at Rochdale Infirmary is still as busy as ever in fact this weekend Rochdale had the highest number of patients in A&E out of the four!

43 new babies were born at Rochdale Infirmary in one week from the 1st to the 7th November.
Our population has grown massively since the reconfiguration began our elderly are living longer and our birth rate continues to rise.

Our Ambulance service does a remarkable job and provides an excellent service but they are being stretched to their limits.

No mention of the 35 LIFT centres that were promised for the N.E. Sector (14 of which were promised in the borough) in the Healthy Futures and Making it Better programme on the basis that provision would be near to home how many have actually been delivered?

Only one person who is a representative for the Patients Council spoke in favour of the closures she stated that “this is how they do it in Cumbria” well we have a very different geographical difference in the Rochdale Borough to Cumbria as well as a bigger population and a higher volume of traffic plus our health needs are much more a problem. I would have thought anyone involved with the Patients Council was looking after the health needs of our borough and taking a more independent view and was very disappointed to learn otherwise.