A consultation to permanently remove general emergency surgery from SWAH is to launch this month.

There was a unanimous decision by the Western Trust to proceed with a consultation on the permanent suspension of Emergency General Surgery at SWAH at a Western Trust meeting today.

Diana Armstrong MLA has expressed her concern at today’s announcement.

“The unanimous decision by the Western Trust to proceed with a consultation on the permanent suspension of Emergency General Surgery at SWAH, having abjectly failed to first engage meaningfully with the local community, is deeply disappointing,” she said.

“I believe the Trust has once again let patients and local staff down by handling this issue in such a confused and unsatisfactory manner. If the Trust believes this is the right thing to do in the interests of patient safety, then they should have been making those arguments publicly and presenting the clear evidence in recent months. Instead there has been a total vacuum in public information.

“There are also justified suspicions locally that the Trust has been slow on implementing some of the recommendations from the critical RQIA review from earlier this year.”

For full coverage see next weeks Fermanagh Herald.