Co. Tyrone Grand Orange Lodge are dismayed by the announcement
that the County is to loose virtually all its hospital services.
It is unbelievable that the largest county in the province
will be without an acute facility for emergency treatment
and that patients will have to rely on travelling up to 50
miles to reach Craigavon, Altnagelvin or Enniskillen, on single
carriage way roads were traffic can be busy and slow moving
because of, for example, local farm traffic, school buses,
etc. We are not saying that Enniskillen does not need a hospital,
of course it does, but so does Omagh and Dungannon. The heroic
work done in the immediate aftermath of the Omagh bomb in
the local County Hospital is well known. Hopefully a major
incident of that nature will not happen again, but what if
it ever did? The population of Omagh District Council area
and its hinterland is as big as the whole of County Fermanagh
and we also have three other Council areas in the County.
It is scandalous to see the large South Tyrone Hospital with
all its good facilities lying almost completely unused and
the run down of the Mid-Ulster Hospital will leave the Cookstown
community bereft of a good caring Institution. We feel as
a whole community, irrespective of religious or political
differences, that we have been treated with an unwarranted
contempt which none of the people deserve.
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