SUPPORTERS of Watlington Community Hospital turned up in large numbers with the town's MP Michael Heseltine to grill hospital managers who propose to close it down.
About 450 people from across Oxfordshire and even parts of Buckinghamshire packed into Icknield School in Watlington for last night's (Thursday April 16) consultation meeting.
Oxfordshire Community Health Trust plans to close community hospitals at Burford and either Watlington and Wallingford, after being told to save £1.5m by Oxfordshire Health Authority.
A petition organised by WHAR (Watlington Hospital At Risk) and signed by 3,112 people was handed over by patient Mary Buckland, 83, who recently had both legs amputated.
She said after the meeting: "If they shut it down, I have got nowhere to go. Watlington Hospital has pulled me through."
The health authority's chief executive, Michael Taylor, said: "The truth, whether you wish to accept it or not, is that we are going to have to face up to painful and difficult choices in our local health services."
He said hospitals are not being "singled out" for cuts, and that no decisions have yet been made on the hospitals' future.
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