Mark Garnier, Wyre Forest's Conservative Parliamentary Spokesman, yesterday backed the campaign to keep head and neck cancer operations at Worcester Royal Hospital. Mark met with campaigner Paul Crawford after the Worcestershire Acute Hospital Trust board meeting at Kidderminster Hospital.
Paul has been leading the campaign to prevent the Three Counties Cancer Network relocate existing head and neck operations from the current two sites at Worcester and Gloucester, to just one site at Gloucester.
The Three Counties Network cite 'centres of excellence' arguments in favour of the change, but this has been met with almost unanimous calls for existing arrangements to stay as they are.
Mark Garnier said: "Frankly, I suspect we are pushing at an open door with this. There seems to be a strong consensus that these operations should stay at Worcester - especially after the successful campaign by local Worcestershire Conservatives to locate a linear accelerator at the Worcester Royal. Now that Worcestershire will have a centrally based radio-therapy treatment facility, the arguments for moving these operations to Gloucester seem more and more opaque.
"What is important is that cancer patients have excellent care provided locally. I agree that the treatment must be of the highest quality attainable, but I also maintain that providing this on two sites - Worcester and Gloucester - is achievable whilst maintaining those high standards."