We were astounded to read on the front page of the Gazette on August 14 that a 20 bed ward in Devizes Hospital is due to permanently close in October.

The intention is that people who do not need to be in hospital will be cared for at home by a team of nurses and therapists the Kennet and North Wiltshire Primary Care Trust is setting up?

My husband died in Devizes Hospital two years ago having been lovingly looked after by caring staff.

I have twice been a patient there and have taken patients to casualty and for tests etc.

My husband and I and our family have spent most of our lives in association with hospitals working and living in every sort and size and we found Devizes Hospital with its caring and efficient staff was beyond compare.

It has a casualty department with no waiting time and among the other services it offers are blood testing, X-Ray, physiotherapy, out-patient clinics and, a maternity unit, always with unfailing kindness and courtesy from its nursing staff, local doctors, who work on a rota basis system so that one is always immediately available.

There are also cleaning staff who keep the hospital spotlessly clean and work far beyond their brief, a gardener whose garden is lovely to look out on when a patient, and who is always on hand for work in the wards fixing windows, lights, moving beds etc.

It has a bank of volunteer workers who help with meals, newspapers, shopping, books etc and their flower arrangements in the hospital are a joy so that your first impression on entering the hospital is of shining cleanliness and fresh flowers.

The hospital must be working on a shoestring. When I was there last nurses were having to buy their own tea and coffee.

There is a great need of every bed available in Devizes Hospital and surely it must lighten the load of our major hospitals?

The primary care trust promised in May it would keep services in place until they had a "replacement".

What do they offer as a replacement? Nothing but the "intention to set up a team of nurses and therapists to care for people in their homes".

There are no alternative hospitals less than an hour's drive away. Transport is scarce, unpredictable and costly. The shortage, locally, of even short-term care workers is frightening.

We hear of many patients discharged from Bath and Salisbury hospitals who are quite unable to cope, with no real care organised for them.

It is incomprehensible that the trust should deprive us of the service of this splendid little hospital.

The trust can have no idea of what primary care means to Devizes and this scattered rural community.

MARGARET LINTON

Coulston, Westbury