Wiltshire NHS

Save our community hospitals

FOLLOWING ON from major cut-backs last year, Kennet/West Wiltshire
Primary Care Trust (PCT) have announced the future closures of community
hospitals in Trowbridge, Warminster, Devizes and probably Melksham and
Marlborough.

Roger Davey Senior UNISON steward, Swindon & Wiltshire
Health Branch (personal capacity)

Furthermore, they intend to drastically reduce the number of beds in
Chippenham and also close two local maternity units in an effort to cut
costs. Although management give no figures we believe this dismantling
of Wiltshire’s NHS will put at least 300 to 400 jobs at risk of
redundancy.

As in the rest of the country, this ruthless reduction in hospital
beds will mean that patients who should be cared for in hospital will
now be dumped at home, over-reliant on overstretched privatised
community nursing teams, friends and relatives or inappropriately placed
in private nursing homes.

Moreover these patients will have to pay for treatment which is
described as personal care – a definition which under this government is
increasingly including what most people would consider as nursing care.

These attacks on the NHS are part of the drive towards privatisation
which is reflected in the way the PCT intends to provide community care.
At present, they are encouraging nurses and other medical staff to form
‘social enterprises’, in other words private businesses, to compete for
PCT contracts. It’s a move that will inevitably lead to the domination
of community care by ruthless global corporations.

In response to these dire proposals we in UNISON have held meetings
in all the affected hospitals and, with enthusiastic support from
members, have begun a campaign of resistance across Wiltshire. However,
if our campaign is ultimately to succeed and the NHS saved we need a
national day of action with support given to regional industrial action.