Jeanne Distin, of Balland Park, Ashburton, writes:

At a very well attended meeting in Ashburton we learnt that the recently built hospital in Newton Abbot is currently underused. This would suggest that local GPs prefer to admit their patients to the cottage hospital as they are satisfied with a few beds where their patients can be gently helped to get better before returning home, or gently helped through the process of dying, rather than requiring beds with all the bells and whistles on.

There will be circumstances where the latter is the better option, and future population growth has to be accounted for, but if there is an under-use of resources at Newton Abbot hospital because it was, perhaps, wrongly commissioned in the first place, why should residents of Ashburton and Buckfastleigh, and other localities, be expected to pay for that by the loss of the facilities they already have, that they are comfortable with, that they help to provide with voluntary funding and which they clearly want to retain?

The speaker suggested that other services could come to the cottage hospital in Ashburton in return for the loss of beds, clinics, occupational therapy, dialysis etc. and even hinted that chemotherapy could be done there.

I will not be the only one who knows that on occasions the chemotherapy drugs do not always arrive at the unit in Torbay on time or are not what is required. This can quickly be corrected on site there, from a fully equipped and stocked pharmacy.

Unless we are to have a similar facility at Ashburton – which we can safely doubt – this was at best rather disingenuous or at worst a rather disgraceful emotional hook.

The president, chairman and members of the Ashburton and Buckfastleigh Hospital League of Friends are to be congratulated on giving residents the opportunity to hear what is being proposed.

I urge residents to get behind them when they bring forward any action they feel appropriate to take to preserve our cottage hospital, otherwise it will not be available to you when you, too, wish to be cared for in your own environment.MORE LETTERS IN OUR DIGITAL EDITION