HUNDREDS of activists took to the streets of Liverpool on Saturday, marching to save Liverpool Women’s Hospital and resist NHS privatisation and cuts.
The maternity hospital, the largest of its kind in Europe, is at risk of closure and relocation to a smaller facility at the city centre’s Royal Hospital.
Activists warn that its future is being decided by an integrated care board, which they say is designed to deny care and pump money into private companies.
Reading out a letter from one of the midwives, Save Liverpool Women’s Hospital campaigner Rebecca Smith said: “Staff are continually developing and putting into practice new research and we feel that this identity and status could be lost if the site ceases to exist.”
Refugee Women Connect director Comfort Etim, whose organisation provides support to asylum-seekers and survivors of trafficking, praised the staff at the hospital for helping women seeking sanctuary feel safe and at ease.
“A lot of women might not feel comfortable going down to the Royal to have their babies because it’s an open space and anyone can see them,” she said.
Labour MP Ian Byrne, whose three children were born at the hospital, said: “It’s hugely important that it stays, but also I think it’s a wider message to the NHS that we need it, we value it, we love it.”
Speaking about the need for free healthcare in the face of hostile environment immigration policies, Aliya Yule of Patients Not Passports said: “We are not just marching to save Liverpool Women’s Hospital.
“We’re also marching for people like Amisha, a four-year-old girl who was charged £76,000 for cancer treatment.
“We're marching for an NHS that is free for all, forever, no matter your immigration status, no matter where you’re from and no matter your ability to pay.”
The protesters walked from the hospital in the Toxteth district to the Albert Dock, where the Labour Party conference was opening.
Labour has blocked an attempt to bring a motion calling for MPs to be banned from accepting donations from private health companies and lobbyists, Skwawkbox reported.
Bakers, Food and Allied Workers Union president Ian Hodson said: “No more should we accept that, when you’re in the party that brought the health service into being, you say that you will bring in private enterprise at our expense.
“We’re up against very, very wealthy people because our health is their wealth and we’ve got to put a stop to it.”
