The fourth in a series of seven public consultation events on the future of emergency general surgery at the South West Acute Hospital has been taking place at the Bawnacre Centre in Irvinestown tonight.
Since the beginning of the week previous public events have been held at the Lakeland Forum in Enniskillen, the Castle Park Centre in Lisnaskea, and the Ecclesville Centre in Fintona. All events are being attended by Trust chief executive Neil Guckian, medical director Dr Brendan Lavery, director of performance and services Teresa Molloy, and acting head of acute services Mark Gillespie, who have been answering the public’s questions on the collapse of the service.
On Monday night Mr Guckian told the Enniskillen crowd it would very difficult to reinstate the service due to recruitment difficulties and strict new standards from the Department of Health.
Before all the official Trust events in Fermanagh, an information meeting was held by local campaign group Save Our Acute Services, outlining its stark research on the impact the removal of the service would have on Fermanagh patients, including the increased travel times to access emergency surgery and the risk this poses to local lives.
The next event is taking place next Tuesday in Belcoo, with two further planned for Gortin and Omagh later in the week.
The Western Trust require everyone who is attending to register in advance. To book your place, find further details of the meetings in Belcoo, Omagh and Gortin next week, click here.
You can also find the full consultation document on the link, which sets out how the life-saving service at the Enniskillen hospital collapsed due to a lack of staff, leaving almost all local patients over an hour away from emergency surgery.
For those unable to make the public events, there will be two online events in the coming weeks. Everyone can fill in the consultation document, regardless if they have attend the public events or not.
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