WE need your help. This week the Gazette has launched a campaign to save a specialist cancer surgery unit at Colchester General Hospital.

It seems possible the two existing centres in Essex, one in Colchester and one in Southend, could be amalgamated. We hope this will not be the case and both centres can be maintained.

There is no suggestion patients are being failed by having two centres or that standards of care are affected.

We also appreciate savings have to be found in the NHS – it remains a bottlomless pit in terms of economic investment.

But surely there are countless opportunities to save money which will not directly impact on patients as this decision will.

However, if there is to be one surgical centre, it must be in Colchester.

Our centre already carries out more urology operations than Southend and has the scope to do more.

We have twice as many specialist surgeons than there are at Southend.

Hundreds of thousands of pounds has recently been invested in the latest technology in Colchester which has been at the international forefront of developing new surgical techniques.

We would urge all our readers to support our campaign to save this surgical facility in Colchester.

Find out more about our campaign HERE.

Sign the petition by clicking HERE.