Part of 1. 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:16 pm on 26 September 2017.
Well, it might. It depends, of course, if the health boards agree or not. If they don’t, then of course it will come to the Cabinet Secretary for decision. Wherever you place the trauma centre, there will be people who are more than an hour away from it. It’s inevitable; the geography dictates that. Of course, we have air ambulances that are able to assist in terms of bringing people to hospitals more quickly. But the independent panel has made its recommendations; they’re out in the open now. It’s now for the health boards to decide amongst themselves what the most effective way should be of establishing a major trauma centre—not just a centre, but a trauma network as well. It can’t all be about one centre, important though that centre is, wherever it goes; it has to be about establishing a proper, responsive network to trauma that can feed into that trauma centre in the most appropriate time.