Huge step forward for Whipps – but fight for health services not over yet

17 October 2007 We are delighted that the report this month from NHS Director of Clinical Excellence Professor Alberti has vindicated our arguments for keeping Whipps Cross Hospital as a fully functioning acute district general hospital. But the NHS remains under threat both locally and nationally, and we will continue to fight for investment in buildings and staff at Whipps and an end to cuts and ward closures. We are urging local people to attend the national march and a rally in defence of the National Health Service in central London on Saturday, 3 November.

Professor Alberti’s report says that the only realistic option is to keep Whipps Cross as a full acute hospital – which is what we have been saying all along. It lambasts health chiefs in Outer North East London for a lack of vision, and says that their plans should have started from health needs, not their needs to balance their books. And it says that Whipps should be taken out of the Fit for the Future review entirely and treated as part of a “health economy” that includes Barts and the Royal London rather than Queen’s in Romford.

This is a huge step forward, but Whipps still needs £100 million to modernise its buildings, and we see continuing cuts in the local health service. That’s why our campaign continues.

Campaign Secretary and Whipps Consultant Alan Hakim says, “Whipps will only be able to deliver the first rate service that local people deserve if it is fully funded and working with properly resourced community health services.”

Waltham Forest Primary Care Trust appears to be retreating from the direct provision of healthcare services to a commissioning model – and local community services are being decimated. Management consultants Meridian are recommending £750,000 in district nursing. Campaign Chair Charlotte Monro urges, “We need to be as active in defence of our community services as we have been in defence of our local hospital.”

The continuing threat to local healthcare is part of the wider national picture. Chancellor Alistair Darling has promised a welcome real increase in health spending in his pre budget statement. But we are concerned that much of this new money will go into the NHS and straight out again to swell the profit margins of private contractors though Private Finance Initiative Schemes, Independent Sector Treatment Centres as at King George Hospital and outright privatisation such as the sell off of NHS Logistics.

There is some concern that the polyclinics that would replace local GP surgeries under Health Minister Lord Darzi’s proposals, published in the summer, could be sold off to multinational health care giants that rake in huge profits in the USA while leaving millions of Americans without access to healthcare.

That is why campaigners are urging local people to join the march on 3 November. It has been called by the NHS Together campaign and supported by health service trade unions, campaigning bodies and professional associations.

The march will set off at 11 am from Temple Place, Victoria Embankment, WC2, to Trafalgar Square for a rally to start at 1.30 pm. Local contingents will meet at Walthamstow Central (Selbourne Walk side) and Leytonstone stations at 9.45 am to travel to the march. UNISON has hired a coach from Whipps Cross for hospital workers.

For more information, email the campaign at info@savewhippscross.org