THE future of Evesham Community Hospital will be debated next Wednesday and the thousands of people who have rallied to the call to save services in the town are anxiously waiting on the outcome.

Never in the modern history of the town has an issue raised such strong feelings across such a wide spectrum of the populace of not just Evesham but the Vale of Evesham generally and even further afield.

Alarm bells were sounded earlier this year when out of the blue Mike Ridley, chief executive of the South Worcestershire Primary Care Trust, produced a paper for his members on cost cuts for saving £4 million.

As far as Evesham Community Hospital was concerned, it involved closing The Willows and Bredon Ward and withdrawing GP services from Izod Ward.

A Save Our Hospital group was set up headed by the Mayor of Evesham, Councillor Frances Smith, and including Dr Neil Townshend, of Broadway, representing the GPs in Evesham and Broadway, Jan Marriott, who formerly ran the hospital, and others interested, together with Peter Luff, MP for Mid Worcestershire.

Their objections were based on the fact that The Willows, opened by Sir Harry Secombe, had a national reputation as a stroke rehabilitation unit which would be lost if stroke patients were transferred elsewhere or, as suggested in some cases, treated in their own homes, orthopaedic patients faced an horrendous journey by public transport to Kidderminster and patients in Izod Ward would lose the contact with their own doctors.

They also claimed that the cost-saving figures produced by the PCT did not add up to the savings claimed.

Such was the noise of protest from the general public that the Journal organised a petition and by the time the mayor and Mr Luff led a delegation to Downing Street last week to hand over the petition to Prime Minister Tony Blair. Some 30,000 people had signed it.

Previously SOH campaigners had organised a briefing meeting to spell out to people - the public hall was packed for the occasion - what the PCT planned and then thousands of people turned up to a Sunday lunchtime SOH rally in Market Square, Evesham.

The Mayor of Evesham, Frances Smith said: "The SOH group has been staggered by the support it has received from right across the area. We could never have believed that when the Journal started the petition we would get nearly 30,000 signatures.

"Surely the PCT should take note of that on top of all the other arguments about figures that don't add up and funding issues."

The PCT meeting takes place at County Hall, Worcester next Wednesday.