Campaigners wanting a 24-hour doctor-led accident and emergency unit at Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr have called for a fifth option to be added to plans to reorganise South Wales hospitals.
Under the South Wales Programme, health bosses want consultant-led services for A&E, neonatal, maternity and inpatient children’s services centralised at four or five hospitals.
Under four options put forward by five health boards, the centres would include the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, Morriston Hospital near Swansea and a new hospital to be built at Llanfrechfa Grange near Cwmbran.
The new hospital would have some of its services transferred from the Royal Gwent in Newport and Nevill Hall in Abergavenny.
The fourth or fifth centres could be Prince Charles Hospital in Merthyr Tydfil, the Princess of Wales Hospital in Bridgend or the Royal Glamorgan near Llantrisant.
The Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr campaign group are due to meet next at the council chambers in Tredomen at 6pm on Thursday June 20 as part of a public consultation on the South Wales Programme.
Campaign chair Mariam Kamish said: “I’d urge everyone who feels strongly about the need for a local A&E to attend.
“We’re being offered four options, but each of those options would mean the loss of services – and none of them would give us our A&E back.
“We’re calling for everyone in the area to fill in a response form, online or in their doctor’s surgery – writing in ‘Option 5, No A&E downgradings and a return a 24-hour doctor-led A&E both to Ystrad Fawr and Llwynypia Hospital.’
“If all areas stand together, we can win.
“£660m has already been cut from the NHS in Wales over the last three years according to the Wales TUC. We need to demand that money be invested back into the NHS. NHS Wales isn’t to blame. We need to demand that the politicians give the NHS the money it needs.”
The campaigners have said that in meetings with NHS bosses, a shortage of A&E doctors has been blamed for the lack of services.
Ms Kamish added: “We need to make A&Es in Wales more attractive places to work.
“At the moment our A&Es are stressful places to work, because they’re very understaffed. Consultants are expected to be on call one night in three, instead of one night in six or eight, as in England. The answer is not to spread the consultants we have over fewer A&Es. We need to bring in more consultants and that calls for imaginative thinking.
“NHS Wales should put crèches and child minding services for consultants into A&Es to win back consultants who are raising young families. They should scrap student fees and bring in bursaries for trainee doctors – with a year-for-year match agreement under which for every year a trainee doctor trains, he or she agrees to work for a year in Wales once qualified.
“The current crisis in the NHS can be solved with political will – and it has to be. As Aneurin Bevan said, ‘We will have an NHS in this country as long as people are prepared to fight for it.’”
The £172m hospital, which opened in November 2011, currently has a local emergency centre for minor injuries. Thousands of people have signed a petition calling for a full A&E at the hospital near Ystrad Mynach.
Seems our little tin shack in Ystrad has turned out to be quite the booby prize. If no fifth option materialises we all better start praying the ambulance service improves. Alas the W.A.G. underinvestment in the Welsh NHS means there is little hope.
On the plus side school kids get a free breakfast and if you can make it to a doctors, you get a free prescription to bandage yourself up.
Option 5-no A&E downgradings and the return of a 24hour doctor-led A&E both to Ysbyty Ystrad Fawr and Llwynypia Hospital (in the Rhondda )