{"id":807338,"date":"2026-10-19T07:20:08","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T07:20:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/807338\/"},"modified":"2026-10-19T07:20:08","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T07:20:08","slug":"ni-health-rural-lives-not-an-afterthought-say-campaigners","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/807338\/","title":{"rendered":"NI health: Rural lives not an &#8216;afterthought&#8217; say campaigners"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Rural lives &#8220;cannot be an afterthought&#8221; when it comes to health transformation, campaigners have said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In a joint &#8220;letter of concern&#8221; to the Northern Ireland Executive, four hospital campaign groups have called for a cross-departmental working group on rural health access.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The campaigners have warned that rural communities &#8220;face the real threat of being cut off from timely access&#8221; to acute and other vital hospital services.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">In 2024, former Health Minister Mike Nesbitt <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c5y4wkq63pvo\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">proposed a new hospital network <\/a>which would see healthcare services spread and shared across counties, with patients expected to travel further for specialist treatment. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Department of Health has been approached for comment.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Donal O&#8217;Cofaigh from Save Our Acute Services (SOAS), based in County Fermanagh, said it is &#8220;vital&#8221; that executive ministers collectively consider decisions about removing services from local hospitals.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">SoS Causeway Hospital group, Save Our Services Daisy Hill and the Down Community Health committee were the other three groups that signed the letter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rural lives &#8220;cannot be an afterthought&#8221; when it comes to health transformation, campaigners have said. In a joint&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":807339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[102,2960,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-807338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-health","tag-healthcare","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=807338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/807338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/807339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=807338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=807338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=807338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}