As of writing (May 2023), Mildmay Mission Hospital is no longer in danger of closure, and we are delighted to declare that our Save Mildmay Campaign has been an overwhelming success!
We can never know what is around the corner (as we have all learned over the past three years), but we are still here, and we are delighted to be making plans to develop our services and help even more people in the coming months and years.
So this is our final update as we formally close off our petition, and to do so, here's a message to you from Geoff, our Chief Executive, who worked so hard along with all our clinical colleagues to care for our patients throughout the pandemic, and to preserve the extraordinary, historic charity that is Mildmay:
“I would like to take the opportunity to thank all of our fantastic supporters who, for the past three and a half years as part of the Change.org Campaign, signed petitions, wrote letters to MPs, encouraged us, have stood up and shouted loudly where necessary and flown the Mildmay flag. Without your amazing support, we would not be where we are now.
Despite being at the point of imminent closure a couple of months earlier, since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020, Mildmay Hospital has been operating at full capacity. Like our NHS partners, our waiting list for services is longer than it has ever been. In fact, in the autumn of 2022, we converted two disused bathrooms in our wards to increase the number of inpatient beds, and we are currently reviewing ways to increase our capacity even further.
As a specialist infectious disease hospital whose primary focus for over thirty years was HIV, we are now treating a wider range of patients discharged from NHS Acute Centres across London who are part of a rehabilitation pathway. We are also part of the detox pathway for homeless patients who have initially been treated at St Thomas' Hospital and are not yet ready to go into longer-term accommodation.
From January 2020, when we asked for your support to stop the hospital from closing to May 2023, when we realised that we had arrived (that is, we are relatively safe and able to make plans for the future), it has been a rollercoaster of a journey. So this will be my final message to all of you as part of this campaign; thank you so much - you did it!"
Geoff Coleman
Chief Executive Officer
May 2023
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The #SaveMildmay Campaign
Our campaign to save Mildmay Mission Hospital from closure
In late 2019, the historic Mildmay Hospital was facing closure. We fought hard to stay open, and the public got behind our #SaveMildmay campaign to lobby Parliament and the Secretary of State for Health.
Now, in May 2023, we have formally closed our campaign and declared victory!
We now look forward to many more years of delivering healthcare to those in greatest need.