Campaigners call for new Whipps Cross Hospital

“IT’S TOO LITTLE, too late” claim East London health campaigners in response to Boris Johnson’s cash handout to the NHS. With the Labour Party revealing doubts that the funding includes any new money, health activists say that in any event, there’s little in it for East London.

Experienced health activists have poured over what the Boris offer means for East London and concluded that it may provide some cash for a health and wellbeing club in the Barking & Dagenham, Havering and Redbridge area. That sounds like good news – but it may be a device to allow the authorities to run down facilities in the area’s King George’s Hospital in Ilford. The services under threat there include acute services and A&E provision.

Of greatest concern in East London is that there is no plan in sight to deal with the rapidly decaying Whipps Cross hospital. The last couple of decades have seen hospitals across East London refurbished and renewed – but each move forwards has come at the expense of a smaller unit being closed and with beds and facilities being reduced. At the same time, the local population is growing – as are our healthcare needs.

Whipps Cross is now the weakest card in the Barts NHS Trust pack – and there seem to be no plans in sight to refurbish it so that it can play a full part in meeting local health care needs.

Health campaigners in Tower Hamlets Keep Our NHS Public (KONP) have therefore launched a petition to call on the Government to provide a new Whipps Cross Hospital. They are calling on all East Londoners to take a couple of minutes to help protect our local healthcare provision by signing their petition.

•Sign the petition here:
Petition

•For more information about why we need a new Whipps Cross Hospital, go to:
More information

•For more information about Tower Hamlets KONP, follow them on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/THKONP

•Read more about it:
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