Dismay after meeting on neurosurgery
Talks were held between protesters and Swansea-based AM Peter Black with the Assembly Health Minister and NHS chiefs yesterday over the decision to switch serious life-saving operations from Morriston to Cardiff.
Campaigner Val Taylor, who was among the team of market volunteers who helped collect names for the Post's petition against the switch, said she felt Mrs Hart had done another U-turn over the service.
Mrs Taylor, aged 74, of Garden Village, Fforestfach, said she felt that the people of West Wales had lost out.
She said: "I am more disillusioned now than before I went into the meeting with Edwina Hart.''
In July last year the Assembly Health Minister, who is also the Gower AM, dramatically saved the Morriston unit from the axe after 105,537 people put their name to the publication's campaign.
The new changes to neurosurgery came into force following a key level report that recommended that complex inter-cranial surgery is based in the Welsh capital and that pre-and post-operative neurosurgery remains in Morriston.
Swansea-based health chiefs stressed the decision was good news, particularly as Morriston Hospital has been recommended to have a new CT scanner which will help it retain its Major Trauma Centre status.
Under the scheme, more spinal surgery operations will take place at the Swansea hospital — saving patients from West Wales travelling to Cardiff.
Mrs Taylor added: "The general part of neurosurgery is staying in Swansea but basically serious operations are being lost to Cardiff.
"As far as I am concerned Edwina Hart has done a U-turn. "Will all the neurosurgery go to Cardiff in the future? The problem is there is no service for serious operations west of Cardiff."
While Mrs Taylor welcomed the decision to have a CT scanner at the Morriston site, she said it was unlikely to be put in place for between 12 and 18 months.
Mrs Taylor added: "I am concerned about the future of the service."
The fight to save Morriston's neurosurgery department got underway in July 2006 following a controversial proposal by Health Commission Wales (HCW) to centralise the department in Cardiff.
But NHS Wales chief executive Paul Williams previously pledged that the neuroscience centres at Morriston Hospital and the University Hospital of Wales, Cardiff, would both remain in place.
Peter Black, who is Lib Dem AM for South Wales West, said he believed the Assembly Government had let patients down.
He added: "This meeting confirmed that the Minister has no intention of reversing her decision and returning emergency neurosurgery to Swansea.
"This is, of course, disappointing."
"I am unsure as to how the minister could give us assurances that services would remain at Morriston Hospital only a few months ago, and yet now welcomes the centralisation of emergency brain operations to Cardiff. It is clearly going to lead to increased travelling times for people living in Swansea and further west despite what we have been told for years by this government."
An Assembly Government spokesman said: "The Health Minister agreed in a private meeting with Peter Black and Val Taylor today that she would put in writing a summary of the discussion that took place and the reassurances given on services.
"The Minister does not normally comment on private meetings."
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