Why We Are Holding a Mass March on Saturday. (12pm Victoria Square)

We are marching on Saturday because the Community demand that action be taken to stop the £99 million in cuts announced by Hull and East Yorkshire Hospitals Trust in July. This will put tremendous pressure on health provision right across our area including Goole, many of whose residents are dependent on services in Hull and Cottingham.

 

300 acute beds are to shut with no extra money for primary care. That is 1/5th of capacity. All Neurological specialist beds have already been axed with consultants issuing an open letter to local MP’s saying that care will be “critically eroded”.  In addition the doctors accuse the Trust of a “dictatorial approach” with no consultation.

We are demanding an immediate rebate of this money from Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt.

We are marching because Trust Managers have been forced to admit that staff morale is at rock bottom. In July a report said; “the trust remains a “poor performer” in the National Staff Survey.”

We are marching to defend the very existence of the NHS as we know it as the top down reorganisation that comes online in April effectively breaks up the NHS into local health provision via the abolition of Primary Care Trusts which will be replaced by a marketised approach. GP’s will have to “buy” care from “any willing provider” allowing private health companies to pick over the bones of the NHS.

We are marching to protect jobs, the rights of health workers and patients and to educate the public as to what is afoot. Co Chair Danny Marten who has spent the summer battling testicular cancer through a gruelling chemotherapy regime sums things up thus: “We are all NHS patients, some of us just haven’t checked in yet”

 Cameron said he would “cut the deficit, not the NHS” in 2010 and we are simply holding him to account for that statement.