HEALTH activists have warned that the NHS is under threat at a day of action in Winchester.

Around 20 campaigners braved the rain on Saturday to spread concerns about privatisation of services and a US trade deal which they say will take healthcare out of public control.

They waved placards and collected signatures in the High Street as part of national action by campaign group 38 Degrees.

Nearly 1,000 people in the area have signed a petition calling on Winchester’s parliamentary candidates to vote against privatisation, protect funding and keep health out of a transatlantic trade deal known as TTIP.

Dr Clio Bellenis, clinical director of Hampshire Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, said the threat to the NHS was “terrifying”.

“I’m fed up of it being used as an ideological football,” she said.

“People have taken it for granted for such a long time.

“We’re always being told that we’ve got to try and copy other systems. There must be ideological reasons for it.”

The group also shared concerns about what they said was creeping privatisation of local health care and suppression of whistleblowers.

Campaigner Josh Christian warned that TTIP will allow private companies to sue governments for profits lost from their policies.

“It takes public services out of government control and gives it to corporations, so corporations run the country not the government,” he said.

“Everything we can think of will be privatised, it will be sold off.

“It’s all been done by stealth,” he said. “Most people don’t know about it.”

He added that a new emergency hospital to be built between Winchester and Basingstoke could eventually be privatised.