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Courtesy Independent............
Fury at Jeremy Hunt's U-turn on child heart units
Specialists warn patients will suffer as Health Secretary suspends rationalisation plan
It has taken a dozen years, involved one of the worst scandals in the NHS's history and involved five
reports. But today, the national plan to concentrate children's heart surgery in fewer centres for safety
reasons was torn up and its architects sent back to the drawing board.
The Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt, announced in the Commons that he was suspending the
controversial reform, which would have seen the number of hospitals providing surgery reduced from
10 to seven, following the latest of the five reports which said it was based on a "flawed analysis".
Children's heart charities reacted angrily. Anne Keatley-Clarke, the chief executive of the Children's
Heart Federation, said: "For the past 12 years, ever since the Bristol baby tragedy, we've been
campaigning to ensure that another crisis in the care of vulnerable children can never be allowed
to happen. It has been really disappointing to see the implementation of the necessary improvements
delayed. We want all heart-children, wherever they live in England, to have access to an excellent service."