Why we need Whipps – local Guardian editor

27 March Pat Stannard, Editor of the Waltham Forest Guardian, is a strong supporter of Whipps. She was unable to be there at our rally in February, but here is the text of what she had planned to say.

I am sorry that I cannot attend this rally because I have a previous engagement, but I wanted the Guardian to be represented.

We think this borough needs a district general hospital – and so do at least 20,000 of our readers both in this borough and in areas like Wanstead and Woodford, Loughton and Buckhurst Hill for whom this is the nearest hospital.

As chief reporter of the newspaper in the 1990s, I specialised in health among other things. I saw how Whipps Cross was desperately underfunded year after year. Civil servants and politicians who knew nothing of real life here deemed that this was “an outer London borough” because it had a border with Essex and the funding was calculated accordingly.

The legacies of both that lack of proper finance and the outer London tag are still with us.

The truth about Waltham Forest is that a great many of its 225,000 residents live in areas of multiple deprivation – pointers to ill health. The more problems people have in simply surviving, the less likely it is that they will be willing to travel long distances, with all the expense that entails, to get treatment.

And you don’t have to be poor or needy to feel the journey to Queens Hospital in Romford or King George in Goodmayes would be a serious imposition. When my father was dying in King George Hospital, I spent literally hundred of pounds in cab fares so that I could visit him after work.

As for creating more treatment centres in the community, close to where people live – we already have a treatment centre in the community. It is called Whipps Cross University Hospital.

The Primary Care Trust which would be charged with creating these centres is also strapped for money and dispensing with key staff – the very people who offer health care to people at the times when they need it most, after childbirth, in schools, when they are recovering after illness at home, when they need their wounds dressed and so on.

There are many more arguments to be made, and doubtless speakers here today will present them.

But the message from the Guardian is – Save Whipps Cross as a district general hospital.