Consultation Proposals to close Queen Mary's Hospital, Sidcup's A & E mean a disaster waiting to happen

With more people in our area, including more young, more old, more sick, more vulnerable, not forgetting a major A-road into London, we should be INCREASING our hospital services. However, the consultation report published last week proposes, in all of the options, closing the A & E at Queen Mary’s. This means that, if the report is accepted, that the A & E at Queen Mary’s will definitely close.

With the closure of the A & E there will also be the loss of maternity, emergency surgery and the intensive care unit. The top part of the Queen Mary’s site will become redundant and will be sold off for development as happened at Orpington and Bromley Hospitals. Nearly all of the patients will have to travel to Farnborough, Woolwich or Dartford, 3 hospitals that, as well as being further away, are already running to capacity in their A & E departments. If the A & E closes it will mean a disaster.

This is nothing short of an obscenity from a government that is spinning the fact that under it health care is improving, with local politicians who were unable to stop the closure of Bromley Hospital or the A & E at Orpington hospital.

We will continue to state the obvious, that the further you have to travel in an emergency, the more at risk patients will be from dying. We must as a community, all protest at these proposals, by whatever means.