Alliance considers protest action

The Woy Woy Public Hospital Alliance is considering setting up a protest stand outside Member for Gosford Ms Marie Andrews' Woy Woy office after its request to have a rehabilitation unit reinstated had "fallen on deaf ears".

The group met on April 10, to discuss the prospect of a protest stand in Blackwall Rd.

The result of the meeting was not known as Peninsula News went to print.

Meanwhile, the alliance has written a letter to the State Minister for Health Ms Carmel Tebbutt to point out "the absurdity of the present situation" and request a personal meeting.

Alliance liaison officer Mr Ivan Kinney said that no solution had been agreed upon despite several meetings with the Health Minister's advisor Ms Sally Walkom in October and November last year.

In the letter to Ms Tebbutt, Mr Kinney wrote on behalf of the alliance: "Your Department is operating on the principle that a rehabilitation unit is best placed on the premises of an acute hospital.

"This principle makes sense as a general rule, but when it is applied as an immutable policy without regard to the demographic and topographic conditions existing in a particular locality, questions must be asked.

"And when an existing purpose-built rehabilitation unit which has served a large district acute hospital for the past 39 years is closed; and when this closure is without community consultation and contrary to a recommendation by a committee of experts set up by your own Department in 2007 that the unit should be doubled in size, the absurdity is breathtaking.

"Gosford District Hospital is now without a rehabilitation unit and there are no plans to build one there.

"Patients are directed to Wyong hospital at Kanwal, a country area without public transport from Gosford City.

"Further, the Woy Woy Peninsula has the highest proportion of aged residents in the whole of the Northern Sydney and Central Coast Health Service area, and it is growing rapidly.

"Your predecessor, who said that he had been advised 'by clinicians' to close the Woy Woy unit, was obviously ill-advised.

"We call upon you to rectify this colossal blunder."

Letter, 5 Apr 2010 Ivan Kinney, Woy Woy Public Hospital Alliance