Plaid Cymru - The Party of Wales in Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire - has received unanimous support for its motion to the party's National Conference in Llandudno reaffirming the party's policy of protecting and developing community hospitals such as Tenby Cottage Hospital.
Speaking to a packed conference hall Llyr Hughes Griffiths, the party's local prospective Assembly candidate and a member of the Campaign for Action on Tenby Cottage Hospital (CATCH), said: "At the moment the future of community hospitals in Wales is driven by financial considerations and not by the needs of the local communities that they serve. Health bodies are being forced to cut back services to meet available budgets.
"Community hospitals provide a vital service. They are used for rehabilitation and respite of the elderly and infirm, for day care, and for specialist clinics, and they also provide care for patients discharged from major hospitals. so when you lose a community hospital you create a big gap in health care services.
"I'm proud to be involved in one of the biggest community hospital campaigns in Wales at the moment - the campaign for a new Cottage Hospital in Tenby to serve south east Pembrokeshire. A campaign which Plaid Cymru - the Party of Wales is actively supporting on both a local and national level.
"It really gets to me when you hear Labour politicians tell the people of Pembrokeshire time after time that they support a new hospital and that the money is there, but five years later you're still waiting for them to actually do anything about it. Anything, that is, other than instigate a sixth re-organisation in 13 years at a cost which would probably more than pay for a new community hospital.
"Community hospitals have proven themselves to be a popular and cost-effective model of care which should not only be protected, but developed and built upon rather than destroyed."