A NURSE who wants the new hospital to be built over two sites has announced she is standing for election in June.
Barbara Ward – an independent candidate running with the slogan ‘Putting people and health care first’ – is hoping to fill one of the four Deputy seats in St Clement, where she has lived since 1989.
Miss Ward moved to Jersey in 1979 and has mainly worked in mental-health services, progressing from student nurse to matron and then to senior nurse. She has worked as a bank staff nurse in mental-health services for the elderly since 2011.
The Islander, who has also been a member of the Covid vaccination team, said she believed that the planned new hospital at Overdale would ‘not meet the Island’s needs’.
She said there should instead be a two-site plan, with Overdale being developed as a ‘non-acute facility’, incorporating oncology services, rehabilitation back on Samarès Ward and out-patients.
The current Gloucester Street site should, she said, be used as an acute and emergency facility.
Miss Ward said that alongside this, there should be investment to deliver a ‘first-class community care service’.
In a press release announcing her candidacy, she said she was concerned about the state of health care in the Island, and claimed that she was the ‘first person to coin the phrase that “they are putting the cart before the horse” at the historic meeting in February that refused the planning application for the demolition of all the present buildings at Overdale’.
Miss Ward has also called for a ‘comprehensive population programme’, improved tax and financial management to ‘reverse the double taxation of social security pensions’, more investment in arts and culture, and greater investment in wind, water and solar power.
The press statement added: ‘Above all, Barbara wants to improve life at the local parish level, partly by raising awareness among the young on mental-health issues.’
