Build a new hospital now using community funds

The USA community in which I was born needed a hospital in 1919. The community population at that time was 17,000 – less than Shetland today.

Land was acquired, the 30-bed hospital was built, and the community paid for it – no waiting for tax handouts from state or national governments.

A replacement 75-bed hospital was built in 1956 to serve the community’s 40,000 population. Today that hospital has 255 beds and serves 143,000 people. All this was done and paid for by the community.

It seems to me that Shetland should do the same. There seems to be adequate wealth in the Shetland trusts to pay for something similar to the new 49-bed, £65 million Balfour Hospital in Orkney.

Replacement hospital a ‘generational investment’ so board has to ‘get it right’

Design and build it to NHS standards now, let the trusts pay, and replenish the trusts when government monies arrive.

This is an opportunity to exercise local autonomy.

Christopher McDowall Johnston
Dunwoody
USA