Families in South Woodham Ferrers are so fed up with the town's lack of Health facilities they are saving up to buy their own.

Campaigners are furious amid claims they have been neglected by the powers-that-be and have now made their first target a £12,000 mobile X-ray machine.

GP Dr John Cormack said: "South Woodham Ferrers has had a very bad deal from the health service and particularly from Essex County Council, which built the town but gave absolutely no thought and no finance for medical care.

"Our medical resources are pretty appalling. We have no X-ray and no blood- taking facility."

Dr Cormack, who chairs the South Woodham Ferrers health advisory group, said the problem was made worse by Broomfield Hospital's "appalling" A & E department where patients frequently had to wait for six hours.

Patients' spokesman, Jo Dorado, of Bakers Close, said: "South Woodham Ferrers is not a village any more, it is a big town. We have one small clinic for a population of 19,000.

"I am appalled by the lack of strategic thinking by North Essex Health Authority. I've no doubt they have let down the people of South Woodham Ferrers. It watched the town being built and did nothing."

He called for more out-patients clinics to be held in the town, with doctors coming out to the patients rather than the other way around.

Mike Harrison, chief executive of Maldon and South Chelmsford primary care group, said: "Families in South Woodham Ferrers want as many services as possible in the community and that is the sort of thing the PCG is looking at.

"But whether we can sensibly maintain an X-ray facility and minor injury clinic is something we need to do work on."

This week the PCG was meeting with consultant radiologist Dr Roger Whitney to talk about feasibility.

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