Woy Woy should have fully-equipped hospital

I wonder how many people on the Peninsula realise what it means by the pittance of an offer of $500,000 being spent on the Woy Woy Hospital to upgrade it.

I am sure the Woy Woy Hospital is grateful for any money spent as any improvements are in fact better than before.

But it is such a small amount and what is being done is not enough.

The whole hospital needs an overhaul.

We need the Woy Woy rehab beds returned.

We have been told both by Marie Andrews, our local Labour rep, and also by Carmel Tebbutt that we will not get the rehab beds back.

If governments on all sides think this problem is going away then they can think again.

We have a dedicated group of residents who are determined to fight until we get the rehab beds are back, and not only that.

We intend to fight for the upgrading of Woy Woy Public Hospital to be a fully-equipped hospital.

We are no longer going to accept that Gosford and Wyong have the facilities and we should concentrate on those hospitals.

Gosford cannot cope as it is.

I have no complaints with Gosford Hospital.

In fact, I have only praise for it each time I or members of my family have been in there.

The staff and treatment have been exemplary.

The difficulty is getting into hospital.

If you do not have a life threatening complaint, you wait months and sometimes years for some medical problems.

My other point is what if there was a terrible disaster on the Central Coast area?

The two public hospitals could not cope.

It does not matter what our government representatives are telling us.

No matter who is in power the point I want to make is for more and more people to join us in getting on the Peninsula what we and the surrounding district deserve.

We need this essential service on the Woy Woy Peninsula and surrounding district.

We all need to lobby our governments to upgrade the Woy Woy Public Hospital to a fully functional hospital and to start by bringing the rehab beds back then getting on with the job of upgrading the hospital to alleviate some of the problems facing residents who cannot get into Gosford trouble-free for whatever reason.

Many younger people reading this will think so what.

Gosford is not far to travel.

That's what I thought almost 40 years ago when we should have kept fighting for a bigger hospital here.

Now they want us to travel to Kanwall, even to Gosford its over a $30 taxi ride each way.

You will find this out if unable to get there by car yourself or have no one close to drive you.

So come on: Get yourselves busy lobbying the governments for our own fully staffed and operational pubic hospital on the Peninsula.

Email, 17 Jul 2010 Joan Armstrong, Umina Beach