Campaigners made their voices heard at the weekend in a bid to save the Highland Heartbeat Centre at Raigmore Hospital in Inverness.
The cardiac rehabilitation unit was built in 2005 at a cost of £1million, after the local community raised £750,000.
But NHS Highland is planning to close it to make way for other clinical services which need to be based on the hospital site. The health board has offered assurances that this will not happen until alternative arrangements are in place for cardiac rehabilitation.
But a local campaign group “WeAllNeedTheHeartBeat” has been set up to oppose the move and, on Saturday, some of their members engaged with visitors and staff at the hospital, the UHI and Inverness leisure centre, to raise awareness.
Centre user Peter Gavin called it an NHS “property grab” and that a promise of two additional part-time nurses in exchange for the centre was not good enough.
He added: “This is our excellent life-extending centre, and the Inverness that paid for it and needed it in 2005 for Cardiac Rehab is the Inverness that still needs it in 2017 and beyond.”
Campaigner Ned Larkin said: “Are we really prepared to stand back and watch as it’s destroyed (the centre), just because it suits their corporate financial interests to steal our building away from frail, local, heart-attack victims.”
Mother-of-three Christine Johnson’s father in-law died as a result of hereditary heart issues.
She said: “The fact is cardiac issues remain the biggest killer in the Highlands, it makes no sense to destroy a successful working specialist facility when we still need it.”
