Battle to Save Rural Ambulance Station ; Closure Could Cost Lives, Say Protesters

By Neil McKay

PLANS to close a rural ambulance station will cost lives, worried locals fear.

They say that when ambulances are diverted miles away from Weardale in County Durham it leaves locals in isolated communities at risk.

Recently an ambulance took 45 minutes to reach a woman who had collapsed near St John’s Chapel, Upper Weardale. The crew which would normally have attended the emergency had earlier been diverted to Seaham, on the Durham coast, some 40 miles away.

Now a patient watchdog, the North East Ambulance Service’s (NEAS) Patient and Public Involvement (PPI) forum has rejected plans to close St John’s Chapel ambulance station and base the crew at Stanhope, six miles east, because members believe it will lead to residents receiving a poorer 999 service.

The members of the NEAS PPI forum have spent 12 months monitoring recent changes to the ambulance cover in Weardale, and say the St John’s Chapel station should remain open to “anchor” 999 services more firmly to Weardale. Margaret Dent, a member of the forum, said: “What the station at St John’s Chapel does is anchor the ambulance in Weardale. If we move it down to Stanhope, it increasingly crosses the A68 and goes out of our area, leaving Weardale without cover.”

In a letter to the County Durham Primary Care Trust, (PCT) the body which will decide whether the closure plan will go ahead, the PPI Forum said: “Any decision to close the stations would not only be most inappropriate, but totally unacceptable to the residents of the upper dale.”

Local county councillor John Shuttleworth urged the NEAS and the PCT to listen to the views of the PPI forum and to local residents, claiming: “Lives will be lost without adequate ambulance cover in Weardale.”

Paul Liversidge, director of ambulance operations for the NEAS said: “County Durham Primary Care Trust (PCT) will decide whether St John’s Chapel ambulance station will close. This decision will not be made by NEAS.

“We have produced performance data that the monitoring group has requested and this will form part of the NEAS final report that is submitted to County Durham PCT.”

He added: “As yet, no decision has been made about the future of the St John’s Chapel station.”

The concerns of Weardale residents echo those in rural Northumberland.

Last month The Journal reported how appendicitis sufferer Wesley White, 63, from Bellingham, had to wait eight hours for hospital treatment.

His neighbour, Jim Brownbridge, said: “If Bellingham still had an ambulance and doctors in surgeries out of hours, he would have been taken far earlier in the day.”

(c) 2008 The Journal – Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.