The iconic Moorfields Eye Hospital is proposing to move after more than 120 years of treating people from its main hospital at City Road in Islington.
The proposal is to build a brand new centre on land that has become available at the current St Pancras Hospital site, just north of King’s Cross and St Pancras stations. Once the new facility is up and running, all of the services at the current City Road hospital, the Richard Desmond Children’s Eye Centre and the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology would move into the new building.
The aim is to create the world centre for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of eye disease by bringing together excellent eye care, ground breaking research and world’s best education in ophthalmology.
Over the next few months, Londoners and people from all over the country have an opportunity to have their say on this proposal. The NHS clinical commissioning groups (CCGs), including Brent CCG, are running a joint public consultation until 16 September 2019.
If the move were approved by January 2020, construction could begin in 2022 and the new centre could be open by 2026.
So what does this mean for us in Brent?
The services provided by Moorfields at Northwick Park and Ealing hospitals would not be affected by the proposed move.
For around 11,000 people from Brent who visit Moorfields at City Road every year, the proposal promises a better patient experience with shorter waiting times in comfortable surroundings and access to the best that modern eye care has to offer.
But the biggest significance of the proposed move is the potential impact on eye care itself.
Losing sight has a profound effect on people’s lives. Affecting some of our most basic needs in daily life, it can lead to social isolation and other physical and mental health problems.
According to the Royal National Institute for Blind People, sight loss affects around one in five people over 75 and one in two people over 90. We also know that the risks of sight loss at an earlier age are greater for people from Black and Asian origins.
The proposed new eye care centre offers the much-needed space to expand and develop new models of care. Researchers are already working on breakthrough treatments for macular degeneration, the most common cause of sight loss.
On our own patch, Brent has an excellent community ophthalmology service based in our Sudbury Primary Care Centre and Willesden Centre for Health and Care providing with a team that can spot the risks of eye disease at an early stage and help people to avoid deterioration for as long as possible.
We need a centre that not only offers better care for our future patients but also drives our ability to prevent serious eye conditions and support people at home or locally, as well as in a specialist hospital centre.
