Emergency! Emergency! Save Our Hospitals!

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Local MP Virendra Sharma on the threat to local services

Emergency! Emergency! March to Save Our Hospitals this Saturday. People are waking up to the very real threat to our local hospitals as they sign the protest petition in their tens of thousands against the closure of 4 A&Es in NW London and the closure of Ealing Hospital as we know it. But unless we mobilise huge numbers for the protest march and rally this Saturday the NHS bureaucrats and the coalition government will take no notice and push their crazy and dangerous proposals through.

Local people should be in no doubt about how serious the threat to our precious Hospitals and local NHS is. The current consultation that began in July and ends in under four weeks time has been deeply flawed but still the bureaucrats are pressing ahead determined to push these proposals through as their last act before they are abolished and the GPs take over next spring. These proposals are not supported by local GPs and Consultants and are financially driven and not clinically led as claimed. These proposals must be stopped in their tracks. We can only do this with people power on Saturday!

If the preferred option goes through Ealing Hospital will effectively close. It will lose its A&E, Maternity Unit, Paediatric service, Intensive Care Unit and all acute services. Land on the site will be sold off and luxury flats built in its place. This is an emergency! Ealing has a growing population and health needs that are specific to the area and in cases such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes and TB has double the national average. Many of the most vulnerable and poorest depend on Ealing Hospital and it is a pen stroke away from being closed.

Please join me and tens of thousands of others at the March and Rally on Saturday to protest as loudly as possible and help Save Our Hospitals. Bring all your family, your neighbours and your friends. We are gathering in Southall Park at 10 am and will leave at 11 am to march down the Uxbridge Road past Ealing Hospital to Ealing Common where we will have a rally with speeches and live music at 1 pm. We will be joined at the Rally by another march that has gathered in Acton Park between 11 am and 12 noon and travelled westward along Acton High Street and the Uxbridge Road in protest about the proposed closure of Ealing, Central Middlesex, Hammersmith and Charing Cross A&Es.

The stakes could not be higher. We must Save Our Hospitals. This is a real emergency!

11th September 2012