Nairn gets Covid-19 booster jab clinics following U-turn by NHS Highland
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Covid-19 booster jabs will be available in Nairn once again from this week.
The service will be delivered from the Nairn Community and Arts Centre after a public outcry to the news initially that patients would need to travel to the Eastgate Shopping Centre in Inverness.
In an announcement, NHS Highland said it had created additional capacity to hold Covid-19 vaccination clinics in Nairn.
A clinic will be held on Wednesday at the Nairn Community and Arts Centre.
Alasdair MacKinnon, NHS Highland’s service manager for vaccinations, said: “Patients in Nairn who have been lettered to attend the Inverness Vaccination Centre can attend a clinic in Nairn on Wednesday, April 20 in the Nairn Community and Arts Centre.
“The clinic is being set up on the national booking portal, thus giving those members of the public who had booked to an Inverness clinic the opportunity to instead reschedule and book a convenient appointment time at Nairn.
“Further clinics are also planned for Nairn and we will update our website when these clinics are confirmed.”
But while the announcement has been welcomed, retired local GP Alastair Noble has described the move to deliver the service from the community centre and not at Nairn Healthcare Centre at Nairn Town and County Hospital as “nonsensical”.
“It won’t resolve what will be the issue of providing all immunisations in Nairn and other rural communities in Highlands in the longer term.
“This has come about because of an agreement between the Scottish Government and the British Medical Association (BMA) to remove this service from GP practices,” Dr Noble said.
“The Nairn hospital is run by the local GP practice and Highland health board have to be seen to be complying with government policy by using the community centre.
“It’s nonsensical. The right place for this service is to be delivered is at the Nairn Town and County Hospital which is run by our GPs and clinicians who have the expertise and knowledge of patients in Nairn.
"We fought for nearly 15 years to get it built and the facility is a model for integrated health and social care not just in Scotland but in the UK.
“It cost £13 million to build and it is nonsense that because the Scottish Government have struck this deal with the BMA that GP practices will no longer be responsible for the delivery of Covid jabs. And let’s be absolutely clear – this is just the tip of the iceberg. It affects all immunisations – not just Covid – and that is eventually going to be rolled out across Scotland.
“Where health boards have taken over GP practices which have failed or even the out-of-hours service there’s little evidence that they are capable of delivering the kind of service the public has a right to expect.”
Dr Adrian Baker, of Nairn Healthcare Group, said: “I would like to confirm that we as a practice are ready, willing and able to continue to provide vaccinations for our patients, should the health board wish to approach us.”
Following the news that patients from Nairn were expected to make the journey to Inverness for booster jabs, MSPS were innundated with complaints from angry patients.
Inverness and Nairn MSP Fergus Ewing said the plan to use the Eastgate Shopping Centre for people from Nairn was unacceptable.
He intervened and contacted Scotland’s health minister Humza Yousaf on behalf of constituents.
“I am pleased there is a rethink,” Mr Ewing said. “ I received several calls from constituents and I made immediate representations to the health secretary and he replied to me straight away promising to look into it. I will have further discussions to try to get a full local service reinstated.”
Disabled Nairn patient Dorothy MacDonald (87), who looks after her husband, said she depends on their daughter to take her for her immunisations.
She was one of many who complained at the plan to deliver the service from Inverness.
“My husband will need a home visit but I do not,” she said. “It would have cost me £50 for a taxi to and from Inverness.
“There are many people I have spoken to who are very angry about the withdrawal of this service from Nairn hospital, which provided a great service.”
Auldearn resident James Leslie said his disabled 91-year-old father-in-law received an appointment to attend the Eastgate Shopping Centre for his Covid booster. They had since rearranged an appointment at a church hall in Grantown but can now reschedule for the service in Nairn.
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