12 July 2011
On Saturday 9 July, The Brompton Fountain rallied 200 supporters to march the streets of London in protest at the proposal to close Royal Brompton Hospital’s children’s cardiac surgery unit.
The Brompton Fountain is a charity set up to support families of patients receiving treatment at Royal Brompton. It has been supporting a campaign to save Royal Brompton children’s services since the Safe and Sustainable review panel announced its recommendations to reduce children’s surgery units around England earlier this year. None of the four options proposed included Royal Brompton’s world-class, specialist centre.
Led by the charity’s chairman Lord Jamie Borwick, and general manager, Trudy Nickels, whose son is being cared by the specialist team at the hospital, supporters marched from outside the Houses of Parliament to Royal Brompton, a distance of more than two miles.
The group, consisting of patients, both current and previous, parents, children and hospital staff, wore campaign t-shirts, carried banners, waved placards and handed out flyers to passersby to reinforce their message that the loss of this service would be catastrophic, not only to London, but to the entire UK.
On arriving at the final destination for a family fun day, Lord Borwick, two of whose sons have been Royal Brompton patients, thanked the crowd for their attendance and their continuing hard work to raise awareness of the campaign.
Lord Borwick later said: “A mass of people heard our message and received our leaflets. The turnout was excellent today and shows the parents’ determination to say thank you to Royal Brompton for saving their children. It also gave the families a wonderful opportunity to meet each other and share their stories.
It was an emotional day for many of the participants, but a parent summed it up as a ‘great turnout, great day. Let’s hope it has the desired effect,’ while one of the hospital’s consultants commented that it was “wonderful to see some of these patients doing the walk from beginning to end; it was quite a long way for them.”
Visit The Brompton Fountain’s facebook page
For more Trust information on the review, visit our Safe and Sustainable pages.
