(London Health Emergency) TEN HOSPITALS and upwards of 20,000jobs in London face the axe as the Tory government decides to bite the bullet and implement the Tomlinson Report.
Contrary to media forecasts. Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley has opted to forge ahead with the closures, and set up further reviews" which will axe stil more beds, jobs and services.
The hospitals to go read like a rollcal of famous names.
CLOSURE ONE: Guy's and St Thomas's hospitals are to "morge' as a single Trust - and will be given just six months to decide which of the two sites will close. Most expect that St Thomas, he mod state or tie two, wil face the axe.
CLOSURE TWO: Bart's Hospital is to lose its Accident and Emergency (A&E) unit, and cease to operate as a district general hospital. its shadow Trust is to be dissolved, and manage ment have unsi autumn to decide between three unsavoury options: out. 4. right clasure, a 'merger on the Royal London Hospital site, or a precarious Feb 27, 1993 No. 38 tal on the expensive Smithfield site.
CLOSURE THREE: Charing Cross Hospital, which is to lose its busy A&E unit, is almost certain to face closure in the autumn after a tokenistc review' CLOSURES FOUR, FIVE and SIX: The Middlesex Hospital is to close through mergor with University College Hospital Also to close, and be squashed onto the site will be the Royal Throat Nose and Ear Hospital and the Hospital for Tropical Diseases.
CLOSURE SEVEN: Queen Charlotte's maternity hospital will see its services transferred elsewhere.
CLOSURE EIGHT: St Mark's hospital is to close through a 'marger with Northwick Park Hospital in Har.
CLOSURE NINE: The London Chest Hospital is to close through merger with the Royal Londor LOSURE TEN: Queen Bizabethis Hospital for Children in Hackney will close through merger with the nearby Homerton Hospital.
But this is not the end of the cuts. More closures - some hiting hospi tals like St George's, St Helier, and Kinosion not even mentioned hi Tominson - wil follow, fuelled by the work of six goverment-appointed hit squads, charged with implementing a quick-fire review of cancer, cardiac neuroscience and other key special ties in London. Their brief is to close beds; they must report back in May In addition, the eight Special Health Authorities. Great Ormond Street, Moorfields Eye Hospital, the Royal Marsden and the Brompton. wil be stripped of their Irect funding from the governmen rom April 1994, and forced to com pete for survival in the NHS internal market. Some will face bankruptcy or The effects of these cuts would be to close upwards of 2,100 beds, beginning in the next few months 20,000 health workers - at least 15,000 of them women - are at risk from these proposals, over and above he wave a reduntancies wich i sweeping through most hospitals in London and elsewhere. Claims that these staff could be redeployed inside the NHS are litte more than a sick joke. Perhaps it's time to launch Women Against Hospital Closures?
If the Tories get their way, skilled and dedicated siaff would be thrown onto London's 500,000-plus dole queue, and hospitals close, while 150.000 patients linger on growing waiting lists for treatment.
Central London would be left with
8 March through New York's Lower East Side, protesting Congress of Socialist Women meeting in 1910 in was. Zetkin organised thousands of women to protest and Rosa Luxemburg's arrest and conviction for speeches opposing the coming imperialist war. traditions of International Women's Day alive, to International Women's Day On 8 March 1908, women garment workers marched sweatshop conditions and demanding the vote. At a Copenhagen, socialist women from the United States, inspired by recent battles, initiated a proposal for 8 March to be designated as an international women's holiday. Clara Zetkin, the militant socialist leader from Germany, urged that the proposal be adopted - which it Two of the most significant 8 March celebrations occurred in the next few years. On that day in 1914 Clara Germany's pell-mell course towards the first world war On 8 March 1917, striking women textile workers from the Vyborg district in Petrograd held an International Women's day demonstration which sparked the Russian For the past 85 years International Women's Day has been observed by militant women around the world as a day of worldwide solidarity of women in struggle for In the past decade the organised women's movement has declined in Britain, and there has been, in the advanced capitalist countries, a reactionary offensive against the gains of the women's movement in the 1960s and '70s. More than ever it is necessary to keep the continue to challenge every form of oppression which International WOMEN'S DAY 1993