Save Sully (From Penarth Times)

Save Sully

I THINK MR John Evans is guilty of a gross slur on mental health campaign groups in writing (letters, August 1) that we turn hospitals into "dumping grounds" for mental patients.

Our group is affiliated to the all-Wales Users and Survivors network and much of our efforts go to assisting mistreated patients and to ending abuse.

Mental patients do retain vivid memories and build fantasies about experiences when ill in hospital. Any individual's view must carry a health warning, but most have positive memories of Sully and the opposite of Whitchurch.

At the public meetings on the future of Sully Hospital in July 2000, the chest surgeon Dr Ian Campbell spoke strongly and movingly for reopening Sully for recuperative care.

His concern was not only to make the best use of Sully, but also to tackle the shortage of beds for all types of patients.

Two years later the problem is worse and makes headline news.

The Sully Forum of individuals and organisations concerned with the NHS met late in 1999. The Forum favoured considering Sully Hospital for continuing health care and generally opposed the Bro Taf administrator's proposal to just write off the hospital.

The Forum's call was strongly echoed in the public meetings and endorsed by the Vale Community Health Council.

Bro Taf Health Authority's Board agreed to this condition in September 2000. It's the officials who have failed to implement it.

John Evans' arguments supporting them change from letter to letter, but do not mention the acute shortage of hospital beds in mental health or in other specialities.

The health watchdog, Commission for Health Improvement, in its report last June, put this shortage of beds as the major problem in the Cardiff and Vale NHS Trust. Yet the Trust managers blunder on regardless with their efforts to dispose of Sully - the only chance to make up the shortfall economically and speedily.

If it's needed for health purposes, Sully Hospital cannot of course be converted into a centre for asylum seekers.

Max Wallis Co-ordinator Vale Mental Health Campaign Westbourne Road Penarth