New ultrasound and ENT equipment installed at Emberbrook

Local resident John Bowler, who stars as P.C. Roger Valentine in TV's "The Bill", and the Mayor of Elmbridge, Councillor Rosemary Dane, cut the ribbons at the official opening of the new ultrasound and ENT (Ear, Nose and Throat) services at Emberbrook Health Centre, Thames Ditton, last Friday 18th January.

The Friends of Thames Ditton Hospital have raised over £63,000 to fund the new equipment which enables ultrasound and ENT services to be provided locally within 2 weeks instead of patients having to wait up to 12 weeks for appointments at Kingston or at St. George's Hospital Tooting.

The new services will serve patients from all the GP practices in Esher, Claygate, Hinchley Wood, the Dittons, Weston Green and Molesey who have formed a new GP organisation called MEDICS ( Molesey, Esher and the Dittons Incorporated Care Services) working within the NHS to provide care closer to home. Dr Michael Crow from MEDICS thanked the Friends for their generous gift of this costly equipment.

The Friends remain determined to continue pressure on the Surrey Primary Care Trust to open all 14 rehabilitation NHS beds at Emberbrook to build on the improvement in health care in the local area which these new ultrasound and ENT services will provide.

Comment:

That the Hospital and adjacent GP services exist at all is in large measure due to the past efforts of leading figures in the Residents' Association. Ruth Lyon and Karen Randolph played a major role in galvanising the successful opposition to the redevelopment of the Milk Marketing Board site as a Tesco supermarket and garage. Instead, it was developed as residential property and as part of the arrangement, our RA councillors on Elmbridge Borough Council saw to it that two acres of the site were made available to Elmbridge on favourable terms. That land was used to provide a recreational area, incluing free public tennis courts, and the site to which the surgery was re-located and the new hospital and care facilities built with private participation. RA figures have engaged very strongly in the activities of the Friends of the Hospital, which have been so successful in raising funds for investments in community health such as the present initiative. RA councillors including our County Councillor Peter Hickman have ensured that we have the means to raise awkward questions when the Surrey Primary Care Trust tries to close down the facility. It is an absurdity that the hospital wing, which is new, purpose-built, ideal, needed, and locally supported, is the subject of Surrey PCT's arbitrary decision to cut, ignoring both Government policy on care closer to home, and local consultation.