AN Aberporth MS sufferer is urging fellow residents of Ceredigion to urgently start a protest against the proposed planned siting of the new Major Trauma Centre in Cardiff rather than in Swansea’s Morriston Hospital.

Retired teacher Meirion Davies fears that unless opposition to the proposed move is drawn up, people living an hour or more from Cardiff will have no hope of receiving the urgent trauma treatment necessary following an accident.

Mr Davies, an MS sufferer who regularly attends Morriston Hospital, says he has been told that neurological and other services, currently sited in Morriston, could also be lost to Cardiff if the plan went ahead.

“Cardiff residents have a major trauma unit in Bristol and there would be the choice of taking trauma patients either there or to Morriston should the need arise,” he told the Cambrian News.

“We in west and mid Wales would have no alternative but Cardiff.

“People in this part of the world and their elected representatives need to start shouting about what this would mean for those of us living so far west.”

Mr Davies was responding to last week’s disclosure that University Hospital of Wales in Cardiff had been recommended to become Wales’ first major trauma centre providing specialist care for the most life-threatening injuries.

A panel of independent experts has been assessing Cardiff’s bid, along with one from Morriston.

But Mr Davies argued that exercising the Cardiff option would leave large tracts of west and mid Wales well over an hour away from such potentially life-saving services.

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