Heart surgery campaigners take fight to Downing Street

Patients, parents, doctors and nurses were joined by many of the region’s MPs as the petition was unloaded from an ambulance and carried by stretcher to Number 10.

Protesters said the huge number of people who had backed the campaign – believed to be the biggest regional petition ever – was a clear sign of the support for services at Leeds Children’s Hospital.

The move is part of a mass campaign to put pressure on NHS chiefs to retain services in Leeds, which is included in only one of four future configurations of heart surgery under a national review of services.

Hundreds of children from the region would face travelling to Liverpool, the Midlands or Newcastle if services in Leeds are closed under plans which will see the number of units cut from 11 to six or seven.

Four-year-old Zoe Arnold, who led the campaigners in Downing Street, twice had her life saved by heart specialists in Leeds when she was just a few weeks old.

Her father John, of Methley, near Leeds, said he hoped the “phenomenal” show of support would put pressure on Prime Minister David Cameron and Health Secretary Andrew Lansley to look again at the review he claimed contained a number of “flaws and inconsistencies”.

He said: “Half a million names is absolutely staggering – if anyone had told me when we started this back in February we would get this many names I’d have said they’d gone off their heads.

“It shows the mass support that we have got for the unit.”

Pudsey MP Stuart Andrew, who will lead a debate in the Commons tomorrow on the review, said NHS officials ought to take into consideration the scale of support for the unit when making their final decision.

Mr Andrew said: “This petition really is a great demonstration of the strength of feeling that there is in Yorkshire and the real anxiety that many patients and families have about what it would mean for the Leeds unit to close.”

Cardiologist Mike Blackburn, who works at the Leeds hospital, said the NHS team was beginning to acknowledge problems with the review – among them the impact on adult patients who had been treated as children and the travel times faced by patients to alternative units – but there was still “frustration” over the way it was being carried out.

The charity director of the Leeds-based Children’s Heart Surgery Fund, Sharon Cheng, said: “There are 14.5 million people within two hours drive of the Yorkshire unit and if the Government decided to close it, families would be forced to take their children hundreds of miles for surgery.

“We have been overwhelmed by the support from the people of Yorkshire and hope that this petition has got the message across to the Government that the Leeds unit cannot be allowed to close.”

The programme director for the Safe and Sustainable review, Jeremy Glyde, said support for having fewer, larger children’s heart surgery centres remained “very strong”.

“We welcome the fact that people are getting involved in this important consultation and having their say. Everyone’s view will be considered before final decisions are made,” he said.

A Department of Health spokeswoman said: “This independent review is being led by experts within the NHS to ensure that children’s heart surgery remains safe and fit for purpose in the future.

“No decisions have been made and it would be premature to pre-empt the outcome of the consultation.”