Spalding dad's plea in battle to save services at Pilgrim
A dad who would have lost his wife and baby daughter without emergency care at Pilgrim Hospital is calling on MP John Hayes to do more to save vital services there.
Labour Party member Gary De-Vanche, who has campaigned alongside SOS Pilgrim to stop the axing of children’s, maternity and other services, has criticised the South Holland and the Deepings MP for not attending public meetings in Boston.
Mr Hayes has opposed cuts to children’s, maternity and neonatal services in letters to United Lincolnshire Hospitals NHS Trust (ULHT) and the county council Health Scrutiny Committee, and says he wasn’t invited to the Boston meetings and didn’t know they were taking place.
But the Tory MP said: “I would be very happy to hold a public meeting in Spalding if people want one - and if Mr De-Vanche wants to organise a meeting in Spalding I am more than happy to work with him.
“At the end of the day, this is about actually making sure that the health authority do the right thing - it’s not about gesturing, it’s about taking action to get the right outcome.”
Mr De-Vanche’s daughter, Isla, is now two-and-a-half but her life was in the balance when a “low risk” birth switched to a “crash” (emergency) caesarian section for mum Natalie.
The Spalding dad is sure they wouldn’t have survived a blue light ambulance ride to Lincoln and their lives were saved because doctors were on the spot at Pilgrim.
He says: “I am pretty sure that both of them would probably have died.”
Mr De-Vanche says axing key services from Pilgrim will leave Peterborough or King’s Lynn as the nearest hospitals, and if either closed to new admissions - as happened at Peterborough recently - the nearest would be Lincoln or Hinchingbrooke (Huntingdon) and people could end up at Addenbrooke’s (Cambridge) or Nottingham.
Both of Mr Hayes’ sons were born at Pilgrim and his family have had treatment there, and he told ULHT’s boss that his own family, like so many of his constituents, rely on the hospital.
