THE officials at the Department of Health will be left in no uncertain terms how the people of Fermanagh feel about their plan to downgrade the South West Acute Hospital (SWAH) when they receive the response to their latest public consultation.
Over the past few months, since launching its roadmap outlining how to restore emergency general surgery (EGS) at the SWAH and protect its services, volunteers from Save Our Acute Services (SOAS) have been gathering community support for its plan.
This plan also feeds in to the SOAS – and the community – response to the current public consultation by the Department on the reconfiguration of the North’s hospital network, which could see the SWAH downgraded from an acute, or ‘area’, hospital to a general hospital.
SOAS has gathered many thousands of signatures at various events and locations across the county that will be submitted in response to the ‘Creating a Network for Better Outcomes’ consultation, which closes this Friday, February 28.
“This does not mean better outcomes for the people of Fermanagh, because it will permanently remove the emergency general surgery from the South West Acute Hospital, which we just can’t allow to happen,” pointed out Helen O’Sullivan from SOAS.
The thousands of responses gathered by SOAS make clear local people here will not accept the downgrading of the hospital, and the permanent removal of the hospital’s EGS, which has now been suspended for over two years.
SOAS founding member Helen Hamill added the roadmap meetings would be continuing, with the latest taking place on Tuesday night passed at Florencecourt, as were the meetings with political parties.
The last public meeting before the closing of the consultation, the Florencecourt event coincided along with the counting of the responses by SOAS volunteers. While no figure was yet available by the time of going to press, Ms Hamill said the responses were “many.”
“As always, Fermanagh and Omagh people have been rising to state firmly that their hospital must be a rural area hospital,” she said.
Anyone with forms yet to be submitted is urged to contact Save Our Acute Services on Facebook to have their documents collected.
While it is now too late to submit a postal response, the public can still submit response online until 5pm this Friday, February 28.
This can be accessed at www.health-ni.gov.uk/consultations/hospitals-creating-network-better-outcomes-public-consultation
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