Hospital result based on quality

FOR most Guernsey people, news that a campaign to keep open Southampton's child heart unit has been successful is probably of passing interest. For those who have needed its care, however, it is hugely significant.

An enormous amount of effort went into the drive to persuade the Joint Committee of Primary Care Trusts in the UK that shutting the Southampton unit would be short-sighted and damaging.

Closure would have been bad enough in the area of the city. But for Guernsey, reliant on an external provider of specialist health care, it would have been disastrous.

The links that have built up with Wessex over the years have been for a reason, not least trying to minimise the disruption and cost of patients, and family and friends travelling to the city to be with loved ones at critical times.

If islanders have to go to a hospital other than the PEH, Southampton is the destination of choice and it is also the facility that Health and Social Services has confidence into provide the appropriate standard of care.

And in some respects, that is what this review process has been all about – to ensure that Britain has fewer but better specialist units that can provide patients with the best possible care and the best possible chance of recovery.

The success of the campaign – and the stories we ran at the time indicated just how many islanders have been affected by the unit – was not based on emotion alone, although the weight of people power and a 250,000-signature petition was hard to ignore.

Instead, it hinged on recognising the fact that the hospital provides a first-rate service.

What makes the outcome the more gratifying is that it is based on logic and pragmatism and not raw politics.

In today's climate, that is a result indeed.