The turn-out for the public engagement meeting at Doddington hospital three weeks ago was hugely admirable, with many people being, unfortunately refused entry, due to the poor forethought from the CCG about the strength of feeling in our area, (the attendance was a near miracle, considering that the wrong address was printed).

The turn-out for the second ‘public engagement’ meeting for Doddington held at the March Community last week was shockingly poor, it was disheartening and could have initially left a feeling of under-whelming, and that people didn’t care, but that could not be further from the truth.

I had to absolutely scour the local newspapers to find that date and time of the March meeting, it was in such a tiny little fraction of a column, that it would have been missed by most, and that was the problem.

At work, I speak to vast amounts of people, and I get to listen to, and empathise with their issues and problems, and the biggest response I got from the meeting was:

“Has it happened then, I didn’t know...” And there is the problem, if our local papers should ALL put this information on their front pages, and they should let us decide our future. We are not only fighting for our minor injuries units, but when the battle is finished, and the truth has been told, we will also see that we aren’t even just fighting for three local hospitals, we are engaged in a battle to save the life of our whole NHS.

ASHLEY SMITH

Via email