Campaigners who want a full Accident and Emergency department at Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr have announced details of their planned protest march.
The march, which is taking place on Saturday February 16, will assemble at 11.30am on the triangle opposite the site of the former Caerphilly Miners’ Hospital.
It will then proceed through St Martin’s Road and down Cardiff Road in Caerphilly town ending in a rally by the Cenotaph opposite the castle.
Campaigner Brenda Tibbett said: “Marching through Caerphilly with banners flying will put the campaign for an A&E on the map.
“Everyone we tell about the campaign supports what we’re doing. All we need to do is make sure that everyone knows about it.”
The Fire Brigades Union locally is supporting the march and members of the FBU will attend with their banner.
Brenda and fellow campaigner Siân Denatale have taken posters and petitions to every shop, pub and café in Caerphilly and Bedwas. A wide range of other campaign members have done the same from Blackwood to Senghenydd.
Thousands have signed the petition in shops and on stalls. More than 1,700 have joined the campaign’s Facebook Group and over 1,000 have signed an online petition.
Siân explained: “Every minute counts when you need emergency care. Delays waiting for an ambulance or having to travel a far distance yourself puts lives and longterm health at risk.
“That’s why we need to have an A&E locally at Ystrad Mynach Hospital. Having people sent all the way to the Royal Gwent or elsewhere just isn’t safe.
“We’ve asked people to send in their experiences and we’re collecting them as evidence of how important it is that we have a local 24-hour doctor-led A&E. Now, we’re asking people to come march. Over 25,000 people marched in Lewisham recently for their hospital. Let’s see what we can do.”
The campaign is also opposed to the South Wales Programme – a hospital shake-up which could see services centralised in four or five hospitals.
The £172m Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr, which opened in November 2011, currently has a local emergency centre for minor injuries.
The campaign is also selling t-shirts, for people to show their support, which can be ordered at £6.95 each by contacting Mariam Kamish on 07772520192.
I can guess what the Health Boards reply will be. It will be on the lines that Consultation was carried out prior to the opening and several Forums were held where people could air there views. Where were the objectors then ?
On a serios note, I would like to see a full A & E but I believe that the impression given in the early planning stages was that there would be a full A & E and this is why people feel let down.
Well, I didnt bother because our AM had been running the Save the Miners Campaign for what seemed like forever, and assumed the Miners and then the new hospital at Ystrad was in safe hands, obviuosly I was mistaken, and the closure of the Miners and its replacement by a cottage hospital wa sthe Labour party plan all along.I do object to the Beeches proposal, because it seems to me like a confidence trick, as in, oh dear we`ve lost a hospital, but never mind, we can give you a nice coffee shop instead.to quote a press release by the group behind the Beeches "Miners from 29 local pits put aside 12s 6d of their weekly wages to fund the Beeches(They mean the Miners Hospital) equivalent to £8 million in modern money" and ask the community to "pull together" to replicate the donations of our fathers, grandfathers and great grandfathers. Well my mining predecessors, uncles, grandfather paid for the Miners, how many of the Beeches Committee can say the same, yet they invoke the spirit of the miners, but, far from being proud of how theBeeches have taken the miners vision into the 21st century the miners attitude would be summed by the last two lines of the poem, "I stood in the ruins of Dowlais" by the Rhymney poet, Idris Davies. "But they cursed and cursed and would not answer/for they could not forget their humiliation."
Well said, the carpetbagggers in the Labour Party stole our hospital, and are now the same people are trying to make it good by creating a community centre.
It's better to have full services in Cardiff or Newport, and we are in Caerffili part of the Cardiff region. I have three times needed emergency procedures, and Cardiff gave the services that Ystrad Mynach never would. Once I went to Caerffili; thank goodness there was nothing really wrong, because Caerffili was incapable or giving a full service.