Finance · Live Wire
Hundreds of people lined themselves up in support of local hospital services which they fear could be cut back in the future. Crowds demonstrated in Market Place in King's Lynn on Saturday morning. NHS bosses are assessing the future of the Queen Elizabeth Hospital (QEH), and this week, a local newspaper reported that they might consider downgrading its A&E, intensive care unit and maternity services.
The Norfolk and Waveney University Hospitals Group said no decisions had been made and any proposals "would require robust clinical evidence". James Goodman-Stephens, from the town, attended the demonstration with his family and said without the hospital, his twin children might have died. They were born premature and the first was born in the hospital car park with his umbilical cord around his neck.
Goodman-Stephens rushed inside to alert staff, who tended to the baby and the second was born safely. If they had instead been forced to go to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital, 40 minutes away, he said both children would have been born on the A47. "I don't know if they would've survived and if we would've come home with two babies," he said.
"These are essential services that can really cost lives if they're not here."
Source: BBC
