‘I HAVE to come on the march to save my job and to save lives. If Chase Farm closes, lives will be lost,’ nurse Josephine Owusu told News Line yesterday.
A campaign team for the North-East London Council of Action was leafleting Enfield town centre yesterday, getting massive support for next Saturday’s march.
Josephine added: ‘I’ve worked at Chase Farm for five years. It’s a good hospital where staff work as a team.
‘Enfield needs its hospital. A polyclinic can’t do what a hospital can do.’
Local plumber Mark Leighton said: ‘I grew up in Enfield and when I was a kid we had four hospitals.
‘Now we’ve just got Chase Farm and we aren’t going to let it go.’
Nicole Rangergomm, a bank worker on maternity leave, said: ‘I do hope they’re not going to close the maternity, because that’s where I’m having my baby in eight weeks, or that’s where I hope I’m having her anyway.
‘My ante-natal care at Chase Farm has been really good.
‘I’ll try and come on the march and see how far I get.’
Margaret Rebbets said: ‘I’ve been visiting and walking through the A&E every day this week and the A&E has been packed every day.
‘On Wednesday it was really busy. How can they justify closing it?’
Retired Enfield resident Ronald Bucknall said: ‘When we got the Tories out, we thought we were going to get a damn good government, but we’ve got the worst government I’ve ever seen.
‘Our MP, Joan Reagan, is a dead loss. She pretends to want to keep it open, but all she’s really working to do is to close it.
‘I’m 85 years old and I’ve never seen a government like this.’
Caroline Moore, a local resident with two children, both born at Chase Farm, said: ‘We came on the march last year and we’ll definitely come next Saturday.
‘We need the hospital. I can’t imagine it not being there.’
Retired workers, Mr and Mrs Limbrick said: ‘We know nurses who’ve been to Barnet and to North Mid and they said no way could they cope with the closure of Chase Farm.
‘And what happens with crashes on the M25? Chase Farm is so close to the M25, which has multiple accidents every day.
‘Ambulance drivers have said lives would be lost if Chase Farm closes.
‘We’ve lived in Enfield all our lives and we can’t imagine life without Chase Farm. We’ll be on the march.’
Retired school worker Bridget Dobson said: ‘My daughter is due to have her baby at Chase Farm in November. I had to rush my husband in there two weeks ago.
‘I thought to myself afterwards, “thank God I didn’t have to go all the way to Barnet’’.
‘I’ve already been on marches to save Chase Farm and I was on the demonstration against Margaret Thatcher’s privatisation of hospitals outside Chase Farm 15 years ago, when I was photographed in the local paper.
‘Privatisation means services deteriorate and in reality are destroyed.
‘I’m definitely on the march.’
