1,000 rally against heart surgery decision (From York Press)
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1,000 rally against heart surgery decision
9:20am Tuesday 24th July 2012 in News
By Richard Catton, Health reporter
Protesters voice their dismay at the closure of the unit
PARENTS, health workers and politicians united in a huge march and demonstration against the controversial NHS decision to move child heart surgery services from Yorkshire to Newcastle.
“We will not be moved” was the message from every speaker in Millennium Square in Leeds yesterday, to the cheers of the thousand-plus crowd of protesters who travelled to the event from throughout the region.
One of the youngest was 11-week-old Joshua Davidson from Easingwold who had heart surgery at Leeds General Infirmary (LGI) six days after he was born with a narrowed aorta and a hole in the heart.
His mother Kirsty, 39, said: “Leeds just has everything on site. They have accommodation for parents and they make it easy for families to stay together. I have a four-year-old daughter too and if services were in Newcastle it would have been impossible for her to visit as much as in Leeds. The family thing is very important.”
York mum Jacqui Scott, whose son Cameron also had surgery at LGI, said: “We are here today because the surgery service needs to stay in Leeds. It’s saved my son’s life and we need this service here.”
Speaker and Labour MP Hilary Benn said: “It’s a fantastic turnout from right across the region, including York, and the message is that we are not giving up.”
Conservative MP Stuart Andrew, from Pudsey, said the cause had excellent cross-party support.
“We aren’t going to give up the fight,” he told the crowd.
The protest and march came ahead of today’s meeting between Sir Neil McKay, the man behind the decision to end the service at Leeds, and a joint health watchdog made up of councillors from throughout the region.
The group is expected to question Sir Neil over the decision and has already asked for health secretary Andrew Lansley to save Leeds.
However, Professor Sir Roger Boyle CBE, former clinical director for Heart Disease and Stroke, said the NHS was right its decision to pool expertise in fewer centres around the UK.
In response to the demo, he said: “I recognise that people have shown a huge loyalty for the hospital in Leeds but pooling surgical expertise means the clinical community can work together, develop new techniques and deliver improved care to keep more children with complex heart conditions alive.”
Comments(5)
Digeorge
says...
7:12pm Tue 24 Jul 12
I moved my "specialist" care to Newcastle, there were no dissenting voices.
Thanks Guy Fawkes for reiterating it.
wagonb
says...
7:26pm Tue 24 Jul 12
wagonb
says...
7:26pm Tue 24 Jul 12
Digeorge
says...
7:37pm Tue 24 Jul 12
The children who have disabilities such as my son's (deceased) rare heart defects which couldn't be operated in Leeds would benefit the most from this for critical sub-aortic stenosis and a few other things.
This is coupled with the other integrated services of which Newcastle has been at the forefront of the treatment and management of 22q11.2 deletion syndrome/VCFS/ DiGeorge syndrome children along with Great Ormond Street and adults of which form 10-15% of the cohort of children born with congenital heart disease and the most complex disabilities.
What also the review did not take into account the numbers of children who were awaiting major heart surgery and died, the numbers far bigger as those were the figures who had had operations.
Guy Fawkes says...
6:18pm Tue 24 Jul 12
Leeds also has one of the lowest survival rates for this type of operation in the whole of Europe.
As the nephew of a cardiac surgeon I've been hearing quite a lot about this issue ever since the Bristol heart babies scandal in the early 1990s, which caused the research and enquiries that led to this decision. All of that work supported one essential conclusion: that it is vital for the surgeons who carry out heart operations on children to do so frequently, to build up knowledge experience, and then to keep it current. Would you feel safe flying off on your holidays with a pilot who last took the controls eight months ago? It is to avoid that situation that the consolidation of these facilities is being done.
Thankfully, things worked out well for the Davidson family at Leeds. But citing that as a reason not to make these changes is like claiming to know someone who smoked 80 a day and lived to 100, and that therefore there is no truth to the claim that smoking is bad for your health. There are exceptions to most rules. For many future parents who'll find themselves in this situation, the evidence shows strongly that there will be a choice between having to travel 100 miles to visit their child in hospital for a few months, or only being able to visit them in the cemetery at all.