I HAVE served Wigan and Leigh for the past 35 years.

I have done my utmost to ensure patients receive first class medical service.

I would like to ensure that they continue to receive excellent services.

I am overwhelmed at the enthusiasm demonstrated by the public during the consultation of ‘Healthier Together’ and the support we have received from our local newspapers.

The commitment to ensure we retain our services at our hospitals has been phenomenal.

I would like to express my grateful thanks to everyone who has already chosen to retain services at Wigan Royal Albert Edward Infirmary and Leigh Infirmary and taken the time to give us their comments.

To those of you who have not already filled the ‘Healthier Together’ form, I would exhort you to please, please fill this in before September 30 and help us by putting numbers 1 and 2 in the boxes 5.1 and 5.2 which feature Wigan Royal Albert Edward Infirmary as a specialist hospital.

The public of Wigan and Leigh deserve the best possible medical service, and I believe the only way we can do this is to become a specialist hospital. I have no wish to see our patients and their relatives travelling vast distances to receive treatment or to visit their loved ones.

We must appreciate the opportunity in front of us that will affect the health and wellbeing of all. Let us grasp this opportunity of making Royal Albert Edward Infirmary a specialist hospital. Shakespeare says: “There is a tide in the affairs of men which taken at the flood leads on to fortune.

Omitted, and all the voyage of their life is spent in shallows and in misery.

On such a full sea are we now afloat, and must take the current while it serves, or lose our ventures.”

Ladies and gentlemen, let us not lose our ventures. Let us grasp this opportunity with firm resolve.

Nayyar Naqvi OBE
Consultant cardiologist,
WWL NHS Foundation Trust