Wallingford mayor Betty Atkins wants residents to join the campaign to save the town's hospital.

She wants them to attend a public meeting in the town hall on January 7 to get the message across.

She said: "This meeting will be for local people to tell health officials what they want in their hospital -- what services, what staffing and what building prog- rammes. It's our big chance to show that all the efforts we have made in 2003 will be carried forward into 2004.

"Our hospital is important to us and we want to keep it and the services it provides -- we want to improve on them, not lose them."

The latest uncertainty over the hospital's future began a year ago when South East Oxfordshire NHS Primary Care Trust revealed plans for the site's future.

The original plan was to pull down the present hospital, build a new one on the adjacent paddock and use the existing site for housing to finance the venture.

The town council welcomed any moves to improve the hospital and urged the trust to come up with solid ideas.

But relations between the trust and the town council turned sour when the trust refused to confirm that Wallingford would continue to have a hospital -- and said closure could not be ruled out. The trust said a national review of health care might mean that services at Wallingford would be moved to Didcot, where a new unit to deal with diagnosis and treatment would be set up.

The meeting starts at 7pm.

Tell us what you think.