‘MY BABY Victoria was born at Ealing Hospital and is one month old today,’ said mother Gleisa Lima outside the hospital yesterday morning. She joined the West London Council of Action’s daily picket to defend Ealing Hospital.
Last Wednesday, the hospital management carried out the orders of the Tory government and shut the Maternity Department down. The daily picket demands that the Maternity is immediately re-opened.
Gleisa Lima agreed, she added: ‘The maternity must reopen as I found the service very good, the midwives very good, I was very pleased.’ Another local resident and NHS worker, Sharon, who was visiting her mother, said: ‘The care here is excellent.
‘I see funds being cut all the time, whenever there are absences we have to provide cover, and we are stretched, that’s when mistakes are made. Building new urgent care centres are costing so much money, that’s why they want to shut down A&E departments.’
Local mother, Sahra, said: ‘My son was born here and my husband has been admitted three times. I came on the march last Wednesday to stop the closure of the maternity, we need it to be reopened.’
Sanjit had come to have a blood test at Ealing and told News Line: ‘We need all the services here to be kept open it will create so many problems if more departments close.’
When told that the blood test she had just had that morning would have cost her £85 at one of the new private GP surgeries she was horrified. I could not afford that, the NHS must be free for everybody’ she said.
