Calls for hospital investment amid fears over replacement

WITH much-publicised plans for a new £1bn-plus hospital in Carmarthenshire now in severe doubt, calls are being made for millions of pounds to instead be invested in the county's biggest existing hospital.

- ROB HARRIES

Glangwili Hospital in Carmarthen first opened almost three-quarters of a century ago and parts of what is the largest hospital in west Wales have begun to look their age in recent years.

‘A perceived lack of investment to improve certain aspects of Glangwili has been offset by ambitious plans to reshape healthcare provision across not just Carmarthenshire but Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion as well.

Those plans would have seen Glangwili Hospital, along with Withybush Hospital in Haverfordwest, being downgraded, with no A&E departments at either site. With no A&E unit at Llanelli’s Prince Philip Hospital, this would mean the only A&E in the southern section of the Hywel Dda University Health Board region - excluding Aberystwyth - would be housed at a new hospital in the St Clears or Whitland area.

But after plans were first outlined in detail back in 2018, no land has been purchased and health board staff have admitted that they doubt a new hospital will be built at all, and even if it is, it is likely to be years in the future.

With that in mind, the health board needs to invest in its existing hospitals, including Glangwili Hospital, according to local councillors who have expressed concern about the standard of parts of the building.

The new hospital plan was first announced in 2017. Alternative sites have already been identified near St Clears and Whitland,” said Carmarthenshire councillor Peter Hughes Griffiths.

“But years later nothing has happened, except for growing clinical demand and deterioration in the fabric of the present hospital buildings. Therefore, there’s an urgent need to go ahead with investment at Glangwili”

Councillor Alun Lenny remembers being at the hospital as a child in the 1950s. “I recall being taken in my mother’s arms to visit my grandfather in one of the old World War II Nissen huts which housed hospital wards on the Glangwili site in the 1950s,” he said.