AS the proposals for the new ‘super hospital’ to serve west Wales re-surface after the lockdown, a retired Pembrokeshire GP is urging that the priority for the facility should be its services and not its location.

As previously reported, Hywel Dda University Health Board is seeking public opinion over the position of the new multi-million pound hospital, together with decisive criteria in the selection of its site.

A 35-acre site somewhere between – and including – St Clears and Narberth is the location determined through the public consultation held in 2018.

The call for feedback is part of a more general six-week post-lockdown engagement exercise by the health board.

The board has stated that the new hospital will be a ‘centre of excellence for emergency, urgent and planned care’.

And Dr Roger Burns is emphatic that recruitment must be at the heart of the strategy.

“Quality services have to be provided to create the jobs that aspirational doctors want,” he said.

“These need to be designed before the location is decided.

“We need a hospital that can provide stent insertions for heart attacks within the ‘golden hour’; acute treatment for stokes, advanced nuclear imaging technology, radiotherapy and a separate unit for all gut, dirty and infectious surgery.

“It should be able to cope with all common fractures and childcare, and women’s health.”

Dr Burns, 70, who founded St Thomas’s Surgery in Haverfordwest in 1979, emphasised the essential need to keep joint replacement surgery separate because of the procedures’ susceptibility to infection.

“The biggest problem in the Welsh health service - behind litigation - is infection,” he said.

“The infection rate in Welsh public hospitals is one per cent, while in private hospitals it is zero.

“That is why we need a separate ‘gut’ hospital and why I would pay not to have my hips or knees not replaced in a district general hospital – and in fact have done so twice.”

Local Senedd members are encouraging people to make their voices heard by completing the engagement feedback.

Newly-elected Sam Kurtz, representing Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire said that the feedback should not be ‘a box-ticking exercise’.

He added: “The health board need to listen and consider the strong views of the people of west Wales.”

Preseli Pembrokeshire MS Paul Davies is emphatic that retaining services at Withybush should be priority.

He said: “I will be making it clear in my own response that I’m against the proposals for a new hospital site

“I want to see services protected and enhanced at Withybush Hospital so that people living in Pembrokeshire can access vital health services in the county.

“In the run up to the Senedd elections earlier this month, the people of Pembrokeshire made it clear to me that protecting services at Withybush Hospital was their top priority and so I want to make it crystal clear that I will continue to fight for our local hospital and ensure that health services stay put in Pembrokeshire.”

The engagement exercise can be found on www.haveyoursay.hduhb.wales.nhs.uk

The closing date is June 21.