AFTER years of successive Welsh health ministers saying they were too busy to visit the HIV respite centre in Penmaenmawr, the present minister has finally promised a visit.
The award-winning Tyddyn Bach, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last year, provides respite care for people and their families living with HIV and Aids.
Unfortunately, Wales’ only HIV respite centre has only been used by a Welsh sufferer twice since 2004 because it gets no statutory funding from either Westminster or Cardiff. Only English health authorities fund patients to visit Tyddyn Bach.
Philip Kearton-Smith, the manager at Tyddyn Bach, hopes a visit from Edwina Hart will change this.
He said: “I’m very pleased she has agreed to a visit, we’ve been trying for years to get ministers from Cardiff here but it seems we might as well be on the moon.
“I’ve been passed from pillar to post in the past so this is great news. I’d like to thank Mark Isherwood AM, who is a great friend of Tyddyn Bach, who invited the minister.
“We’ve also in the past invited Conwy County Council’s chief executive Derek Barker on quite a few occasions, but again we are always told he’s too busy, and never offers to send anyone else instead.
“I think when Mrs Hart visits she’ll get a feel of what we do and hopefully be impressed enough to give us some funding in the future,” he added. “It seemed that in the past, during election time, ministers would promise to move mountains for us and then we’d quickly be forgotten about after the election.”
Even the BBC is taking up Tyddyn Bach’s cause after spotting an article in the Weekly News. Radio 4 has been to the centre and interviewed Philip and users of the centre and the results appeared on the station’s You and Yours programme.
