{"id":12291,"date":"2021-07-07T09:17:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-07T09:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=12291"},"modified":"2021-07-05T10:18:07","modified_gmt":"2021-07-05T10:18:07","slug":"save-st-helier-hospital-7-july-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/?p=12291","title":{"rendered":"Save St Helier Hospital – 7 July 2018"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

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The battle by local campaigners against the closure of acute facilities at Epsom and St Helier Hospitals in south London has been hard fought and illustrates many of the problems faced by the NHS as the government has called for huge savings from hospital trusts, many made paupers by PFI repayments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The situation continues to develop after the march which I photographed on Saturday 7th July 2018, and in July 2020 plans were approved to build a new smaller Specialist Emergency Care Hospital in Sutton which will bring together six acute services, A&E, critical care, acute medicine, emergency surgery, inpatient paediatrics and maternity services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The trust say in the documentation for the first phase of public consultation<\/a> which closed on 30th June 2021 that “85% of current services will stay at Epsom Hospital and St Helier Hospital. There will be urgent treatment centres open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year at both of these hospitals.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But health service unions and campaigners are worried by the proposals, which they say will strip acute services including two fully functioning A&E departments. The proposed urgent treatment centres will not have the capacity to treat life threatening illness. They say the downgrading of the two major hospitals will endanger the lives of people living in the area.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The new unit is one of 40 across the country which have been announced several times as a part of the governments increased investment in the NHS. Many see this and other similar schemes as being designed to increase privatisation and make involvement in the health service more attractive to healthcare companies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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July 7th was a sweltering hot day in London, and the walk from a park in the centre of Sutton to the St Helier Open Space in front of the hospital went through Sutton High St, fairly crowded with shoppers and then along hot, dusty streets with few people around. Walking was tiring, and taking photographs even more so. It was a difficult event to photograph, where I found relatively little to work with. But I was pleased to be there, supporting the campaign to keep the hospitals open and serving the community, part of a National Health Service that was celebrating 70 years of being brought into existence by a Labour Government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It took a huge and deterimined fight by Nye Bevan<\/a> to get the National Health Service Act passed, with Tories denouncing it as bringing National Socialism to the country and opposing it in parliament at every opportunity. But on 5th July 1948 we got the NHS, although almost ever since the Conservative party when in power has been looking for and finding ways to convert it from a universal public health care system to a service run for private profit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

NHS at 70 – Save St Helier Hospital<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The battle by local campaigners against the closure of acute facilities at Epsom and St Helier Hospitals in south London has been hard fought and illustrates many of the problems faced by the NHS as the government has called for huge savings from hospital trusts, many made paupers by PFI repayments. The situation continues to … Continue reading Save St Helier Hospital – 7 July 2018<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7],"tags":[4798,4795,729,3148,4796,4792,4793,4794,4790,4803,3744,4801,4802,4804,17,244,2866,1263,4800,3741,1264,270,4791,4789,4799],"class_list":["post-12291","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-my-own-work","category-political-issues","tag-70th-birthday","tag-ae","tag-banners","tag-campaign","tag-emergency-services","tag-epsom-hospital","tag-hospital-closure","tag-hospital-downgrading","tag-hospitals","tag-keep-our-epsom-hospital","tag-keep-our-nhs-public","tag-keep-our-st-helier-hospital","tag-koeh","tag-koshh","tag-london","tag-march","tag-marchers","tag-nhs","tag-nhs-at-70","tag-nhs-privatisation","tag-privatisation","tag-rally","tag-st-helier-hospital","tag-sutton","tag-sutton-high-st"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12291","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12291"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12291\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12292,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12291\/revisions\/12292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12291"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12291"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/re-photo.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12291"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}