Below is a letter from the chairman of the Welsh Ambulance Trust responding to the concerns of Beacon reader and former public health consultant Dr MS Matharu, and Dr Matharu's reply to him.

Dr Matharu,

Thank you for your letter of 12th February 2012, informing me of the correspondence which had been sent to Leslie Griffiths, Minister for Health and Social Care, regarding ambulance provision in Monmouth.

Let me assure you that there are no plans to remove the ambulance currently based in Monmouth from the town. Indeed the trust has introduced a Paramedic Rapid Response Vehicle in addition to the 24-hour ambulance.

You mention the role of the Community First Responders in your letter. I believe that they provide a very rapid response which allows immediate life saving first aid to be applied until the arrival of the ambulance or Rapid Response Vehicle and are trained by the trust's instructors to a nationally-agreed syllabus. They do not replace but add to the trust's resources in Monmouth.

You will also be interested to know that the trust has introduced an additional ambulance resource to the Monmouthshire area, and has recruited additional staff at Abergavenny station.

These staff provide a High Dependency ambulance seven days per week which is able to transport patients who have been assessed by a health care professional, and also transport patients between Nevill Hall Hospital and the Royal Gwent Hospital.

This new resource will enable our existing paramedic ambulances in Abergavenny, Monmouth and Chepstow to be available to attend 999 calls.

Please let me know if you require any further information about ambulance service provision in Monmouth.

Stuart Fletcher

(Chairman, Welsh Ambulance Trust)

Dear Mr Fletcher,

I acknowledge your kind letter of 24th February and thank you for the clarity of its contents with respect to a very vexed question that has very deeply concerned the community of Monmouth borough and the surrounding rural area for the last year.

This relates to the threat of removal of the ambulance station and the ambulance vehicle from Monmouth and the affect this would cause to local casualties, especially those that are vulnerable.

I am enclosing a copy of a letter that I wrote to the previous Minister of Health with respect to such an event last year in Monmouth, highlighting the lack of availability of an Ambulance Vehicle.

I shall publish your letter to me in our local newspaper, the Monmouthshire Beacon, so that the rest of our community can note the reassurances contained therein, which, I can assure you, will go a long way to alleviate their anxieties and concerns. For this I am truly grateful to you.

Concerning my remarks with respect to the proposed use of 'Local Volunteer First Responders' it was not made clear when this scheme was being mooted in Monmouth by personnel from the Welsh Ambulance Trust that such 'local volunteers' were to be trained by your instructors to a nationally agreed syllabus, achieving satisfactory standards as required by the Welsh Ambulance Trust.

It was not made clear therefore that when these local volunteers would be called out to deal with a casualty that they would be covered under the 'legal umbrella' of the Welsh Ambulance Trust.

You may be interested to note that in the 1960s I was an anaesthetist in the Professorial Anaesthetic Department of Professor W Mushin in Cardiff Royal Infirnwry, involved in the induction of the then Local Authority Ambulance Personnel in the appropriate methods of keeping a casualty's airway patent by use of mechanical or drug therapy.

This obviously was the beginning of the present paramedic training. I am therefore well versed in the knowledge of the excellent expertise of which our paramedic is capable.

To date I have had no response to my letter to the Minister of Health & Social Care, but when I do it will also be published in the Monmouthshire Beacon.

Dr MS Matharu OBE

(Consultant in Public Health Medicine, Gwent Health Authority, Retired)