THE Hands off Hinchingbrooke slogan, which The Hunts Post has created for our campaign to save the hospital has been placed on a petition circulating the district. One copy is at The Rainbow Surgery in Ramsey, where Dr Arun Aggarwal has warned that a sig

THE Hands off Hinchingbrooke slogan, which The Hunts Post has created for our campaign to save the hospital has been placed on a petition circulating the district.

One copy is at The Rainbow Surgery in Ramsey, where Dr Arun Aggarwal has warned that "a significant downgrade of the hospital will amount to closure".

Dr Aggarwal, who has practised in Ramsey for 14 years, said the hospital had been made "impossible to manage" by a change in Government rules and health authority accounting.

He said: "If you lose certain services, the departments will not be able to support each other. You can't have surgery for example, if you don't have intensive care. You need the complementary skills. You can't just have a cottage hospital here for this size of population."

He added: "According to the league tables, the performance of casualty, patient satisfaction and in terms of clinical results, Hinchingbrooke was as good as Addenbrooke's and other local hospitals - and under the old rules the cost of care per case was cheaper."

District councillor for Ramsey, Ray Powell, who drew up the petition and is distributing it, added: "We don't want to lose Hinchingbrooke. The elderly can't travel 30 miles to Addenbrooke's and 30 miles back again if they are ill. Why should they travel so far?