Burns Centre must stay at QVH - Tierney

Liberal Democrat campaigner Serena Tierney has called for the Burns Centre at the Queen Victoria Hospital, East Grinstead, to be kept open.

The centre is under threat in a new plan to reorganise specialist services across the South East.

After meeting Jan Bergman, Chief Executive of the QVH, Serena Tierney, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Spokesman for Mid Sussex, said:

"It is essential that the world-class burns centre at the QVH is preserved in the latest round of health service reorganisation. I shall be providing my support and advice in the work of the Hospital Trust and its Chief Executive to retain it as a fully-accredited burns centre.

"We cannot afford to lose either the expertise that exists uniquely in this centre or the research unit that goes with it. The current proposal to downgrade the unit result from a process that is not transparent and which does not seem to make sense.

"The QVH burns unit came out top on the assessment of clinical excellence. It seems to me that other hospitals are being preferred in this reorganisation more from a drive for ever-increasing centralisation of services at the expense of medical excellence in small units.

"The QVH accepts patients 24 hours a day and has good helicopter access. It is building extra critical care beds that will be available later this year. There is no reason good enough to downgrade this facility.

"I am also concerned that the uncertainty that this lengthy and secretive review process is causing may result in staff becoming demoralised and leaving. I hope that they will be able to draw strength from the knowledge that the hospital authorities and the local community really value all their work and will support the fight to maintain the unit."