CANCER campaigner Tina Craig has got a new fight on her hands.
After it was realised that there are no plans to include accommodation for the families of sick patients from Argyll at the new Southern General Unit in Glasgow, Tina and her fellow members of the Kintyre Cancer Concern Group (KCCG) are now distributing a petition to try to get something done before work starts.
It is traumatic enough for a family to have a cancer sufferer, without the worry of finding accommodation when accompanying them to Glasgow.
KCCG is looking for support before the building of the new unit begins so that accommodation can be planned from the start.
The group is angry that there is nothing in the plans for accommodation - when somebody is ill it is important to be with them, and if nothing is built, people will be forced to travel the three-hour journey up and down the road to see them.
Tina Craig has first hand experience of this; her husband Hinton died of cancer last year, and she was forced to travel from Campbeltown to Glasgow every day, some times arriving back at Campbeltown and receiving a phone call to go back up to Glasgow. It is the financial hardship as well as the mental one that is causing concern as there is lack of funding available for the families of patients.
Tina said: ‘We are looking to get as many people as possible to sign a petition which will be put around the shops as soon as possible. It is not just Campbeltown that the petition and accommodation is aimed at but the whole of Kintyre and Mid Argyll where people are in the same situation.’
Alan Reid MP for Argyll and Bute is supporting the campaign and has written to Tom Divers, the chief executive of NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde. Mr Reid said: ‘I am concerned that there appears to be no provision for overnight accommodation for friends or relatives of seriously ill patients. There used to be chalets at the Southern General Hospital for this purpose. Providing such accommodation would be a great benefit to relatives or friends of seriously ill patients, who live a long way from Glasgow.’
