THE lingering death of Devizes Hospital, at the hands of the Primary Care Trust has gone on so long now that we are in danger of neglecting the enormity of the social vandalism involved.

To remind ourselves: Devizes Hospital was originally planned and financed by public subscription. Its ownership was passed by bureaucratic manipulation through a series of public bodies, ending up with the Kennet and North Wilts PCT.

The PCT has squandered uncounted thousands on endless "consultation" exercises which have been carefully orchestrated to obscure the opinions of those being consulted.

Meanwhile it is also heavily in the grip of its doctors and consultants: this seems sensible enough, but in practice some doctors' preferences compete with patients' priorities.

As a result these doctors instinctively like to have patients (now cynically called customers) travelling to where the doctors are.

To help prove its case, the PCT has permitted staff and facilities at Devizes Hospital to be attrited, with the convenient result that occupancy has declined to below the PCT's 'viable' level. So, for the PCT it kills several birds with one stone to decimate Devizes Hospital services: it helps their accounts by selling off the valuable hospital site; it saves the inconvenience of practitioners having to travel to Devizes, and it gets over the managerial inconvenience of administering 24 hour coverage in Devizes.

Justice, responsibility and common sense are simply not on the menu.

Meanwhile, the PCT is deliberately not acknowledging the doubling of the Devizes population as a result of district council policies, while the district council's Strategic Development Brief and the Devizes Masterplan, both ignore health care.

This whole sordid business is not just a scandal, it is an abuse by incompetence which, were there relevant legislation, would lay open the PCT to accusations of culpable negligence in the case of resulting fatalities.

Closure of services at Devizes Hospital will depend on ambulance provision for urgent maternity and A and E cases, while home care at night will depend on travelling night nurses in support. For the sake of short term savings, uncounted social costs are being heaped up in the future.

How long will it be before a life is lost in an attempt to reach urgent treatment or birthing facilities by road. How many more will be lost subsequently and how guilty will the PCT management be as a result? In the private sector, there will soon be the sanction of Corporate Manslaughter and directors may be jailed. Will it become possible to exact the same justice in the National Health Service?

J ODY

Chairman, The Trust for Devizes