Call to reopen Shropshire community hospital wards

The idea was pitched at a meeting in Ludlow, put on by the town’s two GP practices and community leaders, to co-ordinate the community’s efforts to protect residents’ health and wellbeing in the face of the pandemic.

Organisers said it was necessary for the community to take matters into its own hands amid increasing uncertainty and a perceived lack of official guidance.

Dr Catherine Beanland from Portcullis Surgery and Dr Caron Morton from Station Drive Surgery were joined by councillors and representatives from some of the town’s businesses, care homes, schools, charities, home care providers and community groups at the meeting at the Methodist Church. Attendees were asked to wash their hands upon arrival and sat two metres from each other.

Dr Beanland said she was “really worried” for her elderly patients who were most likely to become seriously ill from the virus.

Addressing representatives from Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust (ShropCom), which runs Ludlow Community Hospital, Dr Beanland asked whether two currently empty wards at the facility could be temporarily re-opened in light of the current crisis.

She said: “Is the community trust thinking of opening up the two wards in that building that have got oxygen piped in, that were opened by the League of Friends, to offer some respite, to take care of the less ill people?

Inevitable

“It would allow the district general hospitals to take care of the really sick population, who need the ventilators.”

Councillor Andy Boddington, who represents Ludlow North, said the reopening of the wards would also mean people could be cared for without being moved miles away from their loved ones.

He said: “We are asking as a community that those wards are reopened because we will get critically ill people, it’s inevitable, and we will need to have wards for them locally.

“If people need to be taken from their homes into medical care the best thing is for them to go somewhere local. Shrewsbury, Telford and Hereford hospitals are just going to be overwhelmed.”

The meeting also heard from care providers worried for their clients if the virus was to cause staff shortages, and concerned relatives of vulnerable people whose mental health could significantly deteriorate during periods of self-isolation.

Dr Beanland said more than 100 people had already responded to a call for volunteers from around the town and its outlying villages, to make deliveries, collect prescriptions, and help curb isolation by making friendly calls to people stuck at home.

People were also urged to support the town’s independent traders by utilising delivery services now being offered by many for the first time, in response to closures or dips in footfall.

Dr Beanland said: “We don’t want to end up at the end of this with a Ludlow that is full of empty businesses because they have all gone under.”

Anyone who would like to volunteer is asked to join the ‘Ludlow Area Virus Volunteers’ Facebook group.