Save South London NHS

It's 38 Degrees members like these who decide what campaigns we run

My name’s Sophie Mendes and I used to be a volunteer in the 38 Degrees office. I was born at Queen Mary’s Hospital in Sidcup – one of three South London hospitals today threatened with going bust.

Queen Mary’s is still my local hospital. When I heard the news that the government is ready to let it go bust, I felt sad and worried.

Can you add your name to the petition to protect our NHS in South London?

We don’t really know what’s going to happen yet to Queen Mary’s, the Princess Royal in Orpington and the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich.

But there’s a chance we could lose some of the health and care services that many of us rely on. And it could be an opportunity for private health care providers to move in and take over from our local NHS.

There’s a real risk that the politicians and bureaucrats now wrangling over the future of our health services will forget that this is about real people.

It’s my family, and your family, who rely on these hospitals to be there if we have a bad fall, or to treat us every day for ongoing illnesses. But on this day of bad news, no one is asking us what we think.

Let’s speak up now and show the politicians and bureaucrats we’ll be watching their every move. We can tell them we won’t forgive them if they let our local NHS fall to pieces.

Can you take 30 seconds to add your name?

Andrew Lansley, the Health Secretary, is responsible for making sure we all have an NHS we can rely on. But so far he’s done little to reassure people in South East London that our health services aren’t going to get even worse.

We all know that things haven’t been great in our local NHS for a while. My mum has multiple sclerosis, and she used to get regular physiotherapy at Queen Mary’s that really helped. But that was stopped a while ago.

If you agree that Andrew Lansley shouldn’t shrug his shoulders and should start speaking up to protect our NHS, please sign the petition right now.

Here’s what another local 38 Degrees member, Maryann, said on Facebook: “My local hospital is one of those affected. I find it horrifying that the government could even consider shutting down essential services…saving banks is apparently always preferable to saving services that ordinary people actually benefit from.”

Let’s speak up together.