CAMPAIGNERS fighting NHS plans to close the region’s only children’s heart surgery unit have handed a 500,000-name petition to 10 Downing Street.
Supported by Yorkshire MP Stuart Andrew, representatives from the Children’s Heart Surgery Fund (CHSF) and Yorkshire heart surgeons, young heart surgery patients and their parents arrived in London in an ambulance yesterday before handing over the petition at Number 10.
The dossier, believed to be the biggest ever regional petition, contained the names of more than 500,000 people from across Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and North Derbyshire who have pledged their support to keep the children’s heart surgery unit – based at Leeds General Infirmary – open, despite the current NHS review of children’s heart surgery that threatens the future of the Yorkshire unit.
The campaign has seen parents and children who have benefited from the unit at the LGI unite in the battle, with the York mother of Margaux Barker, who was only three years old when she underwent to repair a hole in her heart, calling for an eleventh-hour show of support.
The father of 13-year-old York choirgirl Emma Mallett also called on the NHS to scrap the plan. Emma was just six when she had surgery to correct a life-threatening serious defect of the aorta.
Sharon Cheng, director of CHSF, said: “There are almost 15 million people within a two-hour drive of the Yorkshire unit, and if the Government decided to close it, families would be forced to take their children hundreds of miles for surgery.
“We have been overwhelmed by the support from the people of Yorkshire and hope that this petition has got the message across to the Government that the Leeds unit simply cannot be allowed to close.”
A four-month public consultation period ends on July 1 and, after months of public meetings, street protests, appeals and an online campaign, campaigners are still urging those who have not yet added their name to the petition to do so, as they believe the fight is not yet over.
To find out more, visit chsf.org.uk/save-our-heart-surgery-unit
It must not close
SOMETIMES, politicians just have to admit they got it wrong.
More than half a million people have put their names to a petition calling for the children’s heart surgery unit at Leeds General Infirmary to be saved. Yesterday, what is thought to be the biggest regional petition ever collected was handed in at 10 Downing street.
The people who signed that petition know what they are talking about. They include the parents of children such as Margaux Barker, featured in The Press last week, who underwent surgery to repair a hole in her heart at the age of only three.
“We feel devastated at the idea that the unit might close,” Margaux’s mum, Myriam, said. If the Leeds unit were to close, desperately sick children from our area would have to travel to Newcastle or even further for surgery.
That would not be acceptable. This petition gives ministers half a million reasons to change their minds.
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