OVER 300 angry residents packed into a public meeting on November 1 to oppose the closure of casualty and acute services at Edgware Hospital in north London.
The meeting, called by the local Barnet health authority as the final au, ir ils curisuitation", was unusual in allowing a platform space for the local Hands Off Our Hospitals campaign.
After the health authority presentation had been received with stony silence punctuated by occasional heckling, Campaign spokesperson John Lister won rousing applause when he denounced the plans as motivated by government cash cuts.
Strong speeches from the floor against the closure plans included the Tory Mayor of Harrow, pensioners and patients from all three boroughs affected, and a speaker from the local ex-servicemen's club, who won a standing ovation for his bluntly-worded attack on the health authority and overpaid NHS managers.
Campaigners at the door collected several hundred pounds in donations; including a shamefaced donation from the health esthority's main speaker!
Near-unanimous
With near-unanimous, allparty local opposition to the scheme - with all four Tory MPs opposed, and only one of the 183 councillors in the three boroughs of Brent, Harrow and Barnet (the chair of the health authority) prepared to vote in favour - there are real hopes that the government can be forced to step in and halt the Barnet plan, giving campaigners a historic victory.
Money no object for private hospitals as NHS is slashed By Terry Smith 1,000 people crowded in to a Liverpool public meeting opposing plans to axe the local Regional Blood Transfusion Centre, along with four other regional centres across the country.
The plans, put forward by yet another Tory-appointed quango, the National Blood Authority, have been almost unanimously condemned, with opponents including Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, Oxford University, and hundreds of thousands who have signed petitions circulated by the threatened centres in Liverpool, Lancaster, Oxford, Brentwood and Plymouth.
A detailed response published by the Staff Side of the NBA warns that the cost-cutting plans, designed to slash NBA spending by £10-f12 million from a £135m budget, would break up scientific teams, lose thousands of specialist donors and risk a total collapse of the service.
Hospitals in North Wales, for example could face increased bills for blood supplies of up to £2m a year, bringing elective heart and hip surgery to a grinding halt, or forcing cuts elsewnere.
Among the proposals put forward by the management consultants behind the new scheme was a plan to increase the 'throughput' of mobile blood collection teams by halving the length of time to draw a unit of blood from each donor. In place of the current legal minimum of 17.5 minutes 'bleed time', each patient would get just 9.5 minutes, and be rushed in and out in a total of just 18 minutes!
The same firm suggested savings of up to f500,000 a year from keeping blood at room temperature instead of under refrigeration, though they admitted this would increase the bacteria content of the blood.
Hidden agenda
The hidden agenda behind these proposals is a drive towards privatisation of the blood service, and the sale of cheaper British blood products on the potentially lucrative European market.
But if donors discover they are being exploited, tens of thousands will vote with their feet, creating a potentially devastating shortage of blood for vital operations and other treatment.
The hasty 2-month consultation on the plans has now ended, but the pressure of campaigning must be sustained to ensure that the issue remains in the public eye, and that the proposals are defeated.