This week's Community Column is written by retired local minister and health campaigner Rev Ian Miller, who chaired a meeting in Helensburgh earlier this month expressing concern at plans to downgrade the out-of-hours GP service at the Vale of Leven Hospital.

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Well done Helensburgh and its surrounding communities.

A full house of around 500 people delivered a damning guilty verdict on July 3 on an uncaring health board’s plans to remove the out of hours GP services from the Vale Hospital and relocate it in Paisley.

Dr Brian McLachlan, Jim Moohan and Jackie Baillie outlined the catastrophic implications of this decision should it be implemented and issued the rallying call that we should be vigilant and that our opposition should be informed, constructive but also resolute.

Campaigners have for years railed against what they have described as ‘death by a thousand cuts’. There is the feeling, however, that removal of this life-saving service could be the final nail in the coffin.

Over the years the health board has been guilty of half-truths and a lack of transparency. Sadly, after the usual farce of ‘public consultation’, they usually get their way. I am convinced that the end result, irrespective of the ‘Vision for the Vale’, and of the fine words from the chairman to re-assure us that the Vale is safe, is the demise of a hospital and the unacceptable clinical risks that will be faced by our community.

Last year the GP out of hours service treated 15,000 patients. To transfer the service to Paisley will assuredly disadvantage the disabled, impoverished and vulnerable. Surely the sensible alternative is for the health board to ensure adequate GP cover to continue this well used service.

Professor David Kerr once described the ‘integrated care’ model pioneered by local GPs some years ago as “exemplary”, and maintained that it met government criteria that health services should be delivered as locally as possible and as specialised as necessary.

If that dictum still stands then GP out of hours must remain. The GPs themselves are totally united on this issue. We must get behind them.

For the sake of our hospital, our community, the frail and the vulnerable, this is a battle we must win.