Local residents have about two months in which to comment on the suggested merger of Harrow's Northwick Park Hospital and the Central Middlesex in Park Royal.

It is likely that while Brent and Harrow Health Authority will get a number of responses to their consultation document from organisations concerned with the provision of local health services, they will hear little from individuals other than a handful of activists.

If that is the case, it will be wrong. Love it or loathe it, Northwick Park Hospital touches the lives of just about every local resident: if you haven't been treated there yourself, you will almost certainly know someone who has been. The future of the hospital is the business of all of us: we do, after all, own it.

Our letters pages have seen a lively debate over recent months on the future of Mount Vernon Hospital, some miles down the road in Northwood. But our correspondents have been ominously quiet on the fate of the hospital on their own doorstep.

This is due, in part, to a resigned view that the health authority and the NHS trusts which run NPH and the CMH have made up their minds and, no matter what the public says, their positions will not be changed except, perhaps, on minor details of the merger. The consultation process, this argument goes, is nothing more than a public relations gloss to create an impression that those who will make the final decision give a toss about what the people served by the hospitals think.

If this view prevails it will be a tragedy. There may be over-riding reasons why this merger should go ahead and a united hospital might serve the people of Brent and Harrow better than the present arrangements allow. But that doesn't diminish the value of a strong public challenge to the plan to ensure that the decisionmakers explain themselves fully and justify themselves every inch of the way towards merger.

Speak out now: if you don't, and the merger works against the public interest, your voice of protest at the deterioration in services will carry very little moral weight.

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