Belford Hospital

[1] After the existing facility proved inadequate, a new hospital, which was designed by Joseph Gleave and built by Arnott Macleod, was officially opened by Princess Margaret and the Earl of Snowdon in April 1965.

[1] When the Scottish Executive looked at reorganising rural health care in 2004 there were clear reasons put forward to retain provision of an emergency service at the Belford.

[4] At the end of November 2009 the surgical and medical wards were merged to form a Combined Assessment Unit (CAU).

[6] The emergency department sees around 9,000 patients a year[7] making it one of the smallest in Scotland; however due to its proximity to the outdoor activity centres in the Lochaber region sees proportionally a significant amount of trauma prior to transfer to tertiary centres in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen.

[9] Although equipped to perform antenatal ultrasound scans, this service has not been offered at the Belford since June 2012, because of a national shortage of appropriately trained staff.