Letter: Location of stroke services really matters

Having spent seven weeks recently visiting a friend who was recovering from a stroke, I was alarmed to hear that stroke services at Calderdale Royal, which was rated the best in West Yorkshire in 2011, now face closure.
By The Newsroom
Published 2nd Mar 2017, 16:00 BST
Updated 24th Mar 2017, 10:40 BST
Calderdale Royal HospitalCalderdale Royal Hospital
Calderdale Royal Hospital

Halifax is about 13 miles from Todmorden, whereas Bradford -the next nearest stroke unit - is some 20 miles away.

This matters because immediate treatment is essential -according to the Stroke Association a significant number of patients don’t get to hospital quickly enough- and because it’s vitally important that visitors are able to get to the hospital regularly, possibly over quite a long period of time.

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Last year there were protests about the threatened closure of the A and E department at Halifax. Your article of February 23 makes it clear that the stroke unit now faces closure because of a ‘Sustainability and Transformation Plan’ - in other words for financial reasons.

Whilst I realise we can’t expect unlimited public investment in health and social care, or local authority services, the gulf in wealth between the extremely rich and the rest of us has been growing steadily, unaffected by the recession.

The top 10 per cent now have private wealth of around £5 trillion -that’s five thousand billion (twelve noughts)- and would not suffer any hardship if a few percent of this were claimed by means of a wealth tax.

Even one per cent would net the public purse around £50 billion. Since wealth inequality is linked to poor health outcomes in all sorts of ways, a significant redistribution of wealth and income can and would deliver a genuinely ‘sustainable and transformative’ win-win for our underfunded NHS and social care services.

Brian Taylor, Todmorden

Related topics:BradfordTodmordenWest YorkshireHalifaxNHS