IN yet another reshuffle of health authorities Dr Mike Deakin is pleased that he can stay in his job in Herefordshire keeping an eye on the county's health.
When he came to work for Herefordshire Health Authority in 1996 it was like coming home.
He was appointed consultant, and later director of public health for the county and his office in Victoria House was only a few hundred yards from Lord Scudamore School, where he was a pupil as a boy.
Later he went to Ross Grammar School, chose medicine as a career and went to Sheffield University to qualify.
He trained as a GP and worked in that area until 1990 before moving closer to home by taking up an appointment in public health in Solihull.
In 1996 he came back to his Herefordshire home to take charge of public health and in January this year became acting chief executive of the health authority when Richard Humphries took up a post with the Department of Health.
It was already known that the days of the health authority were numbered and Dr Deakin was having to consider his own position.
But now it has been confirmed that he will be staying. Every health authority is obliged to have a director of public health and Herefordshire Primary Care Trust has chosen Dr Deakin to fill the role.
"I am delighted,'' he said. But he will have to move from his Victoria House office only a few hundred yards from his first school to the trust's HQ at Belmont.
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