Local health advocacy groups are pushing back against plans for a Health Hub in Wallaceburg as presented last week by hospital and community health centre officials.
Co-chair of the Chatham-Kent Health Coalition Shirley Roebuck says it amounts to a reduction in service.
"A hospital is needed in Wallaceburg, not a walk-in clinic which doesn't even run 24 hours a day," she says. "I can appreciate that the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance is between a rock and a hard place as far as provincial funding goes and that is why we are asking the provincial government to fund our hospitals appropriately."
Roebuck stresses the catchment area would include not only Wallaceburg but the sounding areas of Lambton County and Chatham-Kent as well as Walpole Island.
She says if the five in-patient beds that are now at the Sydenham campus are lost it will only make the Chatham campus busier.
