LAST NIGHT councillors on the Isle of Wight voted to join the fight to keep children's heart surgery in Southampton.

The vote comes two weeks after the Daily Echo reported how the Island's Health and Well Being panel agreed that the world-renowed unit at Southampton General should be saved.

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The consultation is what the government will use to evaluate which units it will keep. It is imperative that as many people as possible use this opportunity to say they want 'Option B' which will save Southampton's children's cardiac unit.

They are angry that health bosses failed to correctly calculate travel time for patients from the Isle of Wight, placing them in Portsmouth instead of on the island because of their PO postcodes.

Hospital bosses have evidence to show that travel times from the Isel of Wight would be longer than the maximum four-hours recommended by the experts, if surgery at Southampton stopped.

Councillor Dawn Cousins said: “We don't feel the times and complexity of it were taken fully into account."

“This is one situation that we felt we should highlight. Retrieving children who are very sick across the water is very important, we're very fortunate to have Southampton General serving us.”