Calif. Activists Are Hopeful
Hospital Will Be

Re-opened

     Los Angeles County health officials will hold a public meeting this week (Oct. 10) to discuss plans for reopening Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital in Willowbrook, which closed in August after failing to meet federal standards for patient care.
The L.A. hospital, constructed after the 1965 Watts riots, was one of the last hospitals built to serve the African American community in the United States. 
     It lost  its federal funding after a series of  controversial incidents including a woman dying on the  floor of the waiting room of  the hospital emergency room last spring.
The hospital lost $200 million in federal funds after the federal government announced that conditions there "placed the health and safety of patients at great risk." The move was widely expected since King-Harbor failed its last federal inspection.
Nevertheless, the news came as a blow to activists who have fought for years to keep the hospital open.
     The loss of King-Harbor would leave many low-income neighborhoods in South Los Angeles without any nearby hospital—just as it was before the hospital opened in 1972. That will mean longer trips by ambulance for the tens of thousands of people treated in emergency rooms.