HEALTH chiefs issued a stark warning last night: "Agree to change or lose services".

About 300 people turned up at Huddersfield Town Hall for the first face-to-face public discussion of proposals to reshape health care in Kirklees and Calderdale.

These include moving some maternity and breast cancer services.

Plans to begin the meeting with an NHS presentation were swept aside as health chiefs were told: "You're here to listen to us!"

Diane Whittingham, chief executive of the hospital trust, appealed for the people of Huddersfield to back proposals to radically shake-up hospital services in a bid to boost levels of care.

She said: "The proposals are clinically driven.

"We are not intending to take money out of the system. If we don't make some of the changes, we will lose clinical services and none of us would wish to see that happen."

She said services could be lost to bigger hospitals if they were not strengthened and centralised on one site.

"We are losing patients all the time to Leeds and Bradford and the same will happen with neo-natal care.

"You need to help us strengthen local services so we can build on the services we have. We want to make them better and keep them as local as possible."

Under the proposals, mums-to-be will only be able to deliver their babies in a midwife-led unit in Huddersfield.

Those with complications needing consultant care - including Caesarean sections and even epidurals - would have to travel to Halifax.

Children needing hospital stays will also be transferred to the Halifax site.

And patients undergoing planned surgery will have to have their operations in Calderdale to make way for emergency and trauma surgery at HRI.

The plans, which are up for public consultation until January 16, 2006, have sparked a wave of protest from people of all ages.

One mother, whose baby had to be delivered by emergency Caesarean section earlier this year, challenged the panel of 10 health chiefs about the safety of transferring women during labour.

The woman, who did not wish to be named, said: "To be in a room in labour for 16 hours is hard. You would then expect to take me out of that room, put me in an ambulance and transfer me to Halifax?

"Do you realise the trauma that would cause me? You are putting the lives of women and children in danger."

Jane Fairbank, of Oakes, who gave birth to her daughter Katie 22 years ago by emergency Caesarean, broke down in tears as she faced the panel.

Mrs Fairbank, said: "I went on blue light from Princess Royal to HRI with placenta abruption and that was far enough. Why would you have someone die at the Ainleys?"

But consultant obstetrician Martin DeBono said: "We do not believe that we are putting women in danger. We are giving women more choice with a midwife-led unit, a home birth or consultant care.

"If labour was not going to plan they would be transferred safely to Calderdale."

Many people were concerned about travelling the distance to Halifax.

Others refused to accept the proposals were not cash-driven.

One man said: "I believe Huddersfield is sufficiently large enough to have our own hospital of excellence.

"If there are areas where they are lacking expertise, surely we should be looking at getting it?"

Angry Anne Welburn, of Beaumont Park, said afterwards: "Not one of the questions from the public got a straight answer. It was all fudged."