Dai Lloyd to ABMU: Oppose Cardiff Major Trauma Centre plan
Democratic scrutiny of plans needed to protect South West Wales’ interests
Plaid AM Dai Lloyd has urged Abertawe Bro Morgannwg Health Board to oppose moves to establish South Wales’ Major Trauma Centre (MTC) in Cardiff, at the expense of Morriston Hospital.
Dr. Lloyd has written to ABM Health Board Chairman Andrew Davies, prior to the Health Board making a decision on the matter on September 28th, so that scrutiny of the options can be undertaken by Assembly Members at the National Assembly.
Both Morriston Hospital in Swansea and the University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff, had put forward bids to become the MTC, providing specialist care for the most life-threatening injuries.
A panel, commissioned on behalf of South Wales’ Health Boards, has recommended that the MTC should be based in Cardiff - partly because of the range of services currently located there, including Neurosurgery, which moved from Morriston a few years ago.
If the Health Boards in South Wales cannot agree on the location of the MTC, then a final decision may be made by Health Secretary Vaughan Gething.
Dr. Lloyd stated:
“The recommendation to establish the Major Trauma Centre in Cardiff is yet another move which will ultimately see specialist services moving away from South West Wales. This follows on from the loss of Paediatric and Adult Neurosurgery from Morriston Hospital some years ago, moves which were fiercely opposed locally.
“We need to protect South West Wales and Mid Wales’ interests in this regard and I do not believe that the current recommendation to establish the MTC in Cardiff as opposed to Swansea best serves the people of Mid and West Wales.
“We know that over a third of all major trauma patients in Wales originate in South West Wales for example. This is as a result of the particularly high rate of road accidents on rural and semi-rural roads, and agricultural and activity-based accidents, often linked to tourism, in rural West Wales.
“We also know that for patients who suffer life-threatening injuries, speed of transfer to specialist care is vital. We often speak of the ‘Golden Hour’ in these life and death situations, and the need to get patients to a trauma centre within those first sixty minutes. Morriston’s location, with good motorway access, means that most people in South Wales and Mid Wales are within that golden hour timeframe. That cannot be said of Cardiff.
“The main argument in favour of establishing the centre in Cardiff is that it has Neurosurgery on site, but as we know in Swansea, that development happened only some ten years ago, and is reversible, should the Welsh Government seek to review provision across South Wales.
“It is imperative that Abertawe Bro Morgannwg Health Board oppose the establishment of the MTC in Cardiff at its meeting on September 28th. That would mean that we could then engage with the Welsh Government on a wider debate around specialist services in South Wales. This matter is too important to be passed through on the nod, without any democratic input. It needs in-depth scrutiny, and the concerns of people in South West Wales need to be heard.”
