ONE of the driving forces behind the development of the Headley Court Veterans Orthopaedic Centre has explained how it will work in a meeting with a Rotary group.

Borderland Rotary Club last week welcomed surgeon Lt Col Carl Meyers and Brian Kilty to talk about the new centre, which is based at the Robert Jones and Agnes Hunt Orthopaedic Hospital in Gobowen.

The Centre is set to open this autumn and Lt Col Meyers gave a full explanation of how it came about.

He said: “The centre will be the first to specialise in the care of veterans in the UK and, I’m sure you’ll agree, that we as a society have a moral responsibility to look after the people who serve this country.”

The centre has cost in the region of £6.5 million to build and equip and when complete will run within the framework of the RJAH NHS Trust.

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He continued: “Raising money for a gold standard resource of this size is always difficult and we initially had a target of £1.5 million but quickly exceeded that and raised the full amount in a time frame that surprised us all.

"Of course, it meant that I could now concentrate on clinical matters which, as a long serving orthopaedic surgeon, I was better suited to than fundraising.

"I am thrilled that we are nearly at the end of this chapter but I feel we are not at the end of the story as we have further plans on the drawing board, but that’s for another day, I’d just like to thank Borderland Rotary for the support."

The RJAH Hospital already conducts more joint replacement operations than anywhere else in Europe and the new facility will see these figure increase even more.

Cathy Osselton, president of Borderland, presented a cheque to Lt Col Meyers.