WORTHING KEEP OUR NHS PUBLIC GROUP LAUNCHED

Worthing Keep Our NHS Public is a group of local health workers, trade unionists and patients concerned about the threatened cuts and even possible closure of Worthing and Southlands Hospitals. Any such action would be a scandalous attack on vital public services.

We are also however concerned at the scale of threatened NHS cuts across Sussex and the whole South East/South Coast region, including by not only hospitals in Chichester, Eastbourne, Hastings, Brighton and Crawley.

We will be working as part of the KWASH campaign set up by local MPs, and we want to ensure that health workers and professionals and service users are actively involved in that campaign, and that KWASH actions send the strongest possible message to the Government that we will accept no cuts of any sort to our health services in Sussex.

This is the text of a leaflet we'll be handing out at tomorrow's demo...


Save Our Hospitals! No Cuts,No Closures, No Sell-offs

We call on the MPs and everyone at today’s march public meeting to agree:

A vote of thanks for the excellent organising work done so far by MPs and others but that the Keep Worthing & Southland Hospitals ['KWASH'] campaign should now be opened up for transparent & democratic decision-making around next steps through regular campaign steering group meetings open to health workers, patients and service users in Worthing and surrounding area.

Strong support for public services in every area. KWASH should declare in favour of supporting ALL hospitals under attack and not arguing that a local resource in Worthing is more important than at Chichester or anywhere else. We should be inviting people from campaigns across Sussex to attend KWASH meetings and vice versa.

That we reject any call for PFI [Private Finance Initiatives] as the only alternative way to develop or maintain good NHS services – we want publicly run and maintained services and not hospitals belonging to a private company and run with our tax money on the basis of profit for that company! There is public money for warfare and layer upon layer of management and bureaucracy – let’s plough that money into world class publicly-owned and run NHS services instead.

That the campaign is an active, lively and inclusive one!
We should set up regular information stalls and publicity stunts to be run in all parts of Worthing Hospital’s catchment area and around the hospital itself to make sure everyone locally is aware of the current situation and is able to get involved in both proposing ideas and helping run support activities.