THE distraught aunt of tragic youngster Callum Cartlidge has demanded to know why her nephew wasn’t taken to the Alexandra Hospital to be stabilised instead of being rushed to Worcester 19 miles away.
Anita Welsh was addressing a specially commissioned panel of medical experts brought together by local doctors at a public meeting in Bromsgrove yesterday (Thursday) to answer concerns about the future of health care in north Worcestershire.
It is an issue of huge concern to the people of Redditch and Bromsgrove, and revolves around this: Can the Alex treat sick children? (yes, say health chiefs) yet if it can, why if parents call an ambulance will their child be taken to Worcester or the Childrens Hospital? And critically, what should ordinary members of the public do?
Campaigners have been calling for the public consultation into the future of acute hospital services in Worcestershire to be suspended until after an inquiry into Callum’s death has been held.
They say it is wrong to continue with the process as the changes proposed, which have already been widely implemented, could have been a contributory factor in Callum’s death.
With the 12 week consultation just six days from completion, this was completely rejected by the local clinical commissioning group (CCG), the governing body of family doctors in Redditch and Bromsgrove.
However the body’s interim chief officer, Simon Trickett, acknowledged the CCG had a huge job to do to explain to people what the changes meant.
Eight-year-old Callum died two weeks ago last Friday after falling ill. He was rushed to Worcestershire Royal, 19 miles away when the family lived just three minutes from the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch.
Callum’s grandmother, Anita Welsh asked: “Why wasn’t he taken to the Alex to be stabilised? Why was he taken to Worcester instead? They could have treated him at the Alex and then moved him to Worcester if he needed to be.”
Mark Doherty, executive director of West Midlands Ambulance Service – which is rated as ‘outstanding’ by the Care quality Commission – told the audience that an ambulance was ‘not just a van’ but packed with the latest lifesaving kit operated by skilled paramedics.
“Our experience of dealing with really sick people is that we have to get them to the best possible place in the quickest time possible. In the ambulance they are already being treated and they are being treated well – we have the best ambulance service in the country.”
Speaking after the meeting, Neal Stote, former chairman of Save the Alex and now working with OurNHS Worcestershire said: “I think people are still really confused.
“On the one hand you have the chairman of the CCG, Richard Davies, saying A&E at the Alex accepts children and adults, then the ambulance service saying they will take them ‘to the most appropriate site’ which isn’t the Alex.
“So what do parents do?
“They have an awful lot of work to do to explain everything to the people of Redditch and Bromsgrove because at the moment, it just does not add up.”
