Heywood Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Action Group present petition of over 1,000 signatures to NHS England

Pearl Naylor, Janet Lees and Debbie Goldrick handing the petition to NHS England representatives

The founding members of the Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Action Group, Janet Lees, Pearl Naylor and Debbie Goldrick have presented a petition of over 1,000 signatures to NHS England.

The petition received 1,080 signatures from people who want the Diabetic Retinopathy screening sessions brought back to Heywood.

Healthwatch Rochdale gave the group the opportunity to meet with the NHS Commissioning Team responsible for withdrawing the service last week. In a meeting held on Tuesday 24 February, 54 people who wanted to discuss the loss of the service attended to speak to the NHS Commissioning Group.

Speaking about the meeting, Janet Lees said: “It was a good meeting overall and we got to ask a lot of questions in relation to the service. Once the meeting had finished we
took the representatives from the NHS into the corridor and presented them with our petition.”

During the meeting, representatives from the NHS Commissioning Group apologised to those in attendance for the loss of the service and agreed to undertake a public consultation.

Janet said: “They did apologise which I think people were grateful for but at the same time it is too little too late. They have said they will now do the public consultation but they should have done that from the start.”

The screening service was withdrawn from Heywood in October 2014 with those who use the service stating that they did not receive any notice that the service was being
withdrawn.

It is understood that the screening was withdrawn following a serious incident in the screening programme last year. It is currently unclear where the incident took place.

“From what we know the incident didn’t happen in Heywood so why take the screenings out of Heywood and punish us?

"My next question would be to ask how many people have gone blind because they have had to cancel their appointment because I know people did cancel their appointments and that isn’t fair,” added Janet.

The Diabetic Retinopathy Screening Action Group are now planning to meet this week to discuss what direction to go in next but do believe that they are taking a step in the right direction.

http://rochdaleonline.co.uk/news-features/2/news-headlines/94425/diabeticretinopathy-screening-action-group-want-to-see-service-brought-back-to-heywood