STROKE rehabilitation services on Samarès Ward at Overdale would move to a new ‘health village’ in St Saviour, under the government’s ‘multi-site’ hospital plans, it has been announced.
Infrastructure Minister Tom Binet, who is in charge of the New Healthcare Facilities programme, revealed the news at a business breakfast yesterday.
Deputy Binet said: ‘Of real importance to the many Islanders who’ve suffered the horrors of a stroke, and the families who’ve cared for them, the St Saviour site provides an ideal location for a new rehabilitation unit, to replace Samarès Ward.
‘I saw, first hand, the damaging consequences of closing it during Covid, for whatever reason they offered up.’
Samarès Ward was closed in May 2020, initially to provide space for an expected high number of Covid cases.
The rehabilitation unit was moved to the smaller Plémont Ward at the Hospital, where it stayed once the immediate Covid threat had passed.
This prompted a campaign, led by stroke survivors, their families and backbench politicians, to persuade the government to move the unit back to Overdale.
Following a last-minute change in position, the previous government agreed to move services back on a temporary basis while Plémont Ward was upgraded.
However, the change in administration last year has meant the unit has stayed at Samarès Ward, which is in the Westmount Centre near the entrance to Overdale.
Its long-term future remained unclear while Deputy Binet and his team worked out which health services would go where as part of a ‘feasibility study’.
Now, the minister has revealed that if the healthcare plans are approved, the rehabilitation unit will be moving from Overdale to a new ‘health village’ to be built next to Clinique Pinel, which is opposite St Saviour’s Hospital.
Deputy Binet said he intended ‘to make absolutely sure that we have an interim facility of no lesser quality, to use between the closure of the old ward and the opening of the new one’.
Responding to the news, St John Constable Andy Jehan, who was one of the politicians who campaigned for the unit to return to Overdale, said: ‘This is a great outcome because it not only retains services but enhances them.
‘I think being in the countryside will really give patients something to aim for, and hopefully be an important stepping stone on their journey to getting better and stronger.’
As well as the rehabilitation unit, the ‘health village’ will also house other services, including mental health, physiotherapy and hydrotherapy. At the Chamber of Commerce breakfast, Deputy Binet added that, under plans to build an inpatient hospital at Overdale and an outpatients’ hospital in Kensington Place and Gloucester Street, the existing 1980s block alongside the Parade could be turned into ‘key-worker’ accommodation.
