This Month's Council Meeting - Health Matters

The Council meeting this month was a week later than usual, to allow councillors to "turn up mob handed" at the Health Board meeting last Monday. Five councillors managed to attend, more than any other local council managed to muster. Health Care for the area was one of the main subjects of the early part of the meeting - the South Wales Programme affects Hay and the rest of Southern Powys, and there are consultations going on now about maternity and neonatal care, and inpatient children's and emergency services.
The consultation is open until 19th July, and can be accessed via www.wales.nhs.uk/swp There's also a phone number, 0300 083 0020, an email address: swpresponse@wales.nhs.uk and for proper letters, there's an address: South Wales Programme Feedback, PO Box 4368, Cardiff, CF14 8JN - or they suggest that letters be sent to local community health councils, which have contact details on the website. And the questionnaire is also available in Welsh.
There has already been a consultation meeting in Hay, though it was poorly publicised. Apparently all the services in this area rely on the building of a new hospital at Cwmbran, and if that doesn't happen, the whole plan falls apart. If they started building now, that hospital would be ready in 2019. They claim that 80% of Accident and Emergency users will see no difference in services, but at the same time they are considering downgrading the A&E department at Nevill Hall Hospital in Abergavenny.
All the councillors were concerned about the ambulance service in this area, which is stretched to the limit now. There's also a problem at Brecon, for example, of ambulances being unable to off-load patients quickly, and having to queue, because of the cramped nature of the site. If they're in a queue, they can't be responding to another call.
In Hay, a lot of people end up going to Hereford hospital, and as it's over the border in England, the people of Hay have no influence whatsoever on the hospital's future. There are rumblings that it might close, in which case the nearest hospital in that direction would be Worcester. It seems crazy that a place the size of Hereford should have no hospital of its own, when once it had four!
The most positive thing the councillors could do, they decided, was to write a letter pushing for increased ambulance and hospital car cover for the area. They would have liked more facilities to be built on the Bronllys Hospital site, but apparently it's in the wrong place in relation to population centres. They also wanted to express their concern about the possible downgrading of A&E departments, and how the plan all seems to hinge on the building of the Cwmbran hospital. They want another, better publicised, consultation meeting for Hay, too.
The Welsh Assembly has no Cabinet member for Rural Affairs (though the last person to fill that position was described as neither use nor ornament!), and therefore there is no-one to speak on behalf of rural communities on a variety of issues. The cities are well served, but the huge areas of rural Wales are forgotten about.
South Wales needs to attract more consultants, and to do this they have to be able to offer consultants something attractive - and a large enough population base for the consultants to be able to practice their specialities. Which means long journey times in rural areas.
They're also talking about tele-conferencing between health professionals, though, so that consultants can talk to paramedics somewhere else in the area.

Meanwhile, there are continued concerns about Hay Surgery, and the councillors are arranging a meeting between a representative of the surgery and themselves and Llanigon and Clyro Community Councils.