We were right, the other parties wrong

Before the General Election Chris Philp, the Tories' candidate for Hampstead & Kilburn led a silly campaign which he described was to save the closure of the Stroke Unit at the Royal Free Hospital. He changed tack several times when the fact of the proposals from Healthcare for London were explored. Rather than shutting, the Royal Free's unit was to have an increase in beds. The excellent rehabilitation work was in fact to expand there. However the new "Hyper Acute Stroke Unit", or HASU, was to be centred on the UCLH site to serve a large part of North Central London rather than at the Royal Free.

Philp was determined to keep his campaign on the road so he managed to get a resolution passed at a full Council meeting, with the support of the Labour and Green parties, critical of the proposal to use UCLH as the HASU.

The Liberal Democrats stood alone in support of the new HASU, largely because we had done enough to study the proposals in detail and recognised they represented a step change in future survival rates from strokes.

Now we have the first figures after the new HASU has been in operation for six months. Some 2,675 patients have been taken by the London Ambulance Service to HASUs across our area. The transport time from home to HASU is less than 30 minutes in 93% of cases. The HASU established in UCLH in April is now ranked second best in the country in the recent RCP audit.

The number of people receiving thrombolysis in our area of London has doubled due to centralisation. Thrombolysis is a lifesaving treatment which can only be given within a strict time period. Previously patients waited up to 72 hours to see a specialist- now they are at the specialist unit in 30 minutes. The in-hospital mortality rate for patients treated through the UCLH HASU is now strikingly low - 6% against the national average of 27%.

This means in practice that if these proposals to centralise emergency stroke care in the HASU at UCLH had not gone ahead, as the other parties wanted, dozens of local people would now be dead. So those that whipped up a stupid frenzy of petty parochialism earlier this year should now hang their heads in shame. Their views were not even supported by key staff at the Royal Free, the hospital they purported to support.

There are times when politicians should properly examine the clinical evidence for change and show leadership on matters of health policy. I am proud to have to got this one right...