Dr Callum George: Argyll & Bute Resident Doctor Calls Emergency Health Roundtable to Tackle “Managed Decline” of Local Healthcare
ARGYLL AND BUTE – Dr Callum George, Scottish Labour candidate for Argyll and Bute and local resident doctor, has today announced an emergency online roundtable event to address the worsening crisis in rural and island healthcare.
The event, titled “Argyll and Bute: The Healthcare Afterthought,” will take place on the evening of Wednesday 29th April at 6:30pm. It aims to bring together patients, clinicians, and advocacy groups to discuss the systemic neglect of women’s health, child health, sexual health, and the controversial removal of chronic pain services across the region and beyond.
The summit follows recent revelations concerning the Scottish Government’s attempts to bypass clinical expertise in pain management and the continued hollowing out of maternity and specialist services in Argyll and Bute—services overseen by the local MSP and Minister for Public Health and Women’s Health, Jenni Minto.
Dr Callum George, Scottish Labour Candidate for Argyll & Bute, said:
“As a doctor working on the frontline, I am simply fed up with the empty promises and the managed decline of our local services. For nineteen years, we have seen a government more interested in political spin than patient safety.
“In Argyll and Bute, our families are paying an ‘Incompetence Tax’—the price of a bloated, centralized bureaucracy that doesn’t understand the challenges of island and rural life. Whether it is the shocking lack of maternity investment, the heartless dismantling of specialist pain treatments, or the complete lack of specialist sexual health provision, the common denominator is a ministerial failure to get the basics right.
“This roundtable is about moving past the secrecy and the excuses. We are going to shine a light on where the system is failing women, children, and those living in chronic pain, and we are going to look toward a practical, locally-led plan to fix it, together.”
Key Focus Areas of the Roundtable:
- The Rural Maternity Crisis: Addressing the dangerous distances expectant mothers, particularly those with high-risk pregnancies, are forced to travel due to lack of local specialist coverage.
- Chronic Pain Betrayal: Responding to the recent exclusion of clinical experts and patients from the government’s new pain management ‘working groups’.
- Child Health & Sexual Health Gaps: Overhauling the fragmented provision that leaves rural youth and families without essential, local support, overburdening primary care in the process.
- Mental Health: An under-resourced and fragmented service with an inadequate capacity for adult inpatients and no inpatient services for children and young people.
- Ending Centralisation: How a Local Democracy Bill and a “Family First” plan for a revival of our NHS can return power to Argyll and Bute’s healthcare professionals and patients.
The event will be hosted via a digital platform to ensure residents from across both the islands and mainland can participate.
The meeting can be joined via this link: https://tinyurl.com/argyllhealthcare and will begin at 6:30pm on Wednesday 29th April 2026, lasting approximately 1.5 hours, depending on the conversation.
