Letter to News Shopper: 1st October 2008

It is disingenuous in the extreme to the local population for John Austin MP to claim (News Shopper letters) that "all the evidence shows this [a more specialised A&E and major trauma centre] will save lives and aid recovery."

Why can't we have this at Queen Mary's?

We now know that some of the A&E patients will have to go to Darent Valley Hospital, some 11 miles away. As for "all the evidence" Mr Austin doesn't provide any. No less a body than The British Medical Association last year, in responding to Lord Darzi's healthcare review, reported that increased journey distance to hospital is associated with increased risk of mortality.

Mr Austin then writes, "not every hospital can do everything."

Why not?

A shortage of consultants is blamed but where's Mr Austin's government's NHS money going? Not on training consultants. doctors and nurses but on management consultants which cost the NHS about £1.5 billion a year and PFI payments which will cost the NHS over £2 billion a year by 2013, to name but two.

Queen Mary's won't "remain a hospital providing vital services" and it won't be providing life-saving services to the 26,000 very major health emergencies each year that will first have a trip up or down the A20 or across Chislehurst, Bickley and beyond to look forward to before getting to an A&E.