Print
Aug 11, 2007 5:57 pm US/Pacific
Activists Demand New Facility Replace King-Harbor
Rally Held Saturday Outside Willowbrook Hospital
LOS ANGELES (CBS) ―
-
-
Representative Maxine Waters held a news conference at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital's front door on Saturday, and criticized its conversion into an urgent care clinic.
Now Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital is closing, leaders in the black and Latino activist communities are demanding that a new hospital be established in its place.
Representative Maxine Waters held a news conference at Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital's front door on Saturday, and criticized its conversion into an urgent care clinic.
"A decision has been made to defund the only hospital that serves an entire area of some of the sickest people in the Los Angeles County area," said Rep. Maxine Waters. "And there is no plan possible that can use other hospitals to serve these people. All of the other hospitals in the immediate area are overcrowded."
Argentina Luevan, state director of the League of United Latin-American Citizens, echoed Walters' statements: "The hospital serves a community of 1.6 million people, the majority being of Latino ancestry," she said.
King's closure, she said, "will add an extreme and cruel hardship to an already-challenged community" that lacks sufficient basic health care, much less important emergency and surgical services.
Public health officials started diverting ambulances to other area hospitals Friday, when the emergency room at King stopped accepting patients at 7 p.m. The rest of the Willowbrook facility is expected to close over the coming two weeks, according the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services.
No one at the hospital was available for comment. Several employees in the emergency room and on the nursing staff refused to speak, claiming that they were told not to speak to reporters.
Supervisor Mike Antonovich blamed colleagues on the Board of Supervisors for ignoring long-festering problems at King due to "allowing political correctness to operate a facility at substandard levels. I get incensed when I see political leaders demonstrating to keep mediocrity in place," he said.
At Saturday's rally, Waters bristled at the attitude. "Mike Antonovich has to accept responsibility, he is one of the members of the Board of Supervisors, and he had the opportunity numerous times to provide leadership, to expose problems at the hospital," she said.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
