THE people of Bury are being called upon to put their words of support into action and join a mass demonstration fighting plans to axe Fairfield Hospital's maternity department.

Thousands of protesters are expected to join the Fairfield Baby Lifeline Society and march through the streets of Bury on Saturday, April 1 in protest at plans to close Bury's maternity department and special care baby unit.

Campaigners are hoping to make the march the biggest Bury has seen and are encouraging the people who turned out for their first march 18 months ago to support them once again and fight the Making it Better proposals.

Under the proposals, women will no longer have the choice of giving birth in their hometown, unless they opt for a home birth, and will be forced to travel nine miles or more to the nearest hospital with a maternity department.

The preferred option favoured by health bosses is to centralise maternity services at eight sites: North Manchester, Tameside, Wigan, Bolton, Oldham, Stockport, Wythenshawe and St Mary's hospitals. Bury could get a midwife-led unit (MLU), which will be available only for mothers expecting healthy births with no foreseen complications, but the unit would not have 24-hour paediatric care and no decision will be made on locations of the units until the Making it Better formal consultation is completed.

More than 3,000 people turned out for the campaign group's first march in October 2004 and within a week the original proposals were withdrawn, with health officials admitting more work needed to be done.

This year's march will follow the same route as the original and supporters are asked to gather at Walkers Field at the corner of Clarence Park in Chesham Road, Bury at 12pm before making their way down to Kay Gardens in Bury town centre.

Joining the march will be the leader of Bury Council, Wayne Campbell, who has once again condemned the proposed changes to health care services.

He said: "Bury Council is concerned that the cluster of maternity and neo-natal services around Manchester, proposed in the Making it Better consultation, would be detrimental to the future health care of all our residents. For those living in our most deprived areas these proposals would mean longer travelling times and financial hardship. It is imperative that maternity and neo-natal services are provided in our area to meet effectively the health needs of all our residents.

"Such a service would also be consistent with the recent White Paper Our Health, Our Care, Our Say: A new direction for community services (2006), which promotes enhanced care in the community. We would urge residents to complete the comments form at the back of the consultation document to oppose this proposal."

l The next meeting of the Joint Committee of PCTs for the Making it Better consultation take place on Thursday at 1.30pm in the Peterloo Room, at the Mechanics Institute in Princess Street, Manchester. For more information, call the Making It Better Network on 0161 237 2865.