The South Tyrone Hospital in Dungannon will finally cease to be an acute hospital on Monday.

In future, the hospital will only provide services such as day surgery, diagnostic tests and outpatient clinics.

The downgrade of the hospital has been carried out over nearly two years, despite a campaign by local people, as part of a Department of Health plan to centralise acute services to nine hospitals.

The South Tyrone Hospital is one of a number of local hospitals around the province which are being downgraded.

Five years ago, paediatrics was temporarily taken from the hospital, but it was last year's removal of maternity, accident and emergency and surgery services which have prevented it from remaining an acute hospital.

The Department of Health said the withdrawal of these services would also be temporary and said County Tyrone patients needing them would be treated at Craigavon Area Hospital in County Armagh.

Craigavon hospital's psychiatric patients, who were moved to Armagh last year, are to stay there for now.

Without key acute services the hospital could not survive as an acute hospital.

Campaigners against its closure have said they were not surprised when the decision was made that medical and coronary care services could no longer be sustained in Dungannon beyond Monday.

These are the last acute services to go.

South Tyrone Hospital's closure will mean Northern Ireland will have 16 acute hospitals.

Prior to devolution, the Department of Health had wanted to reduce that figure to nine, leaving the new minister Sinn Fein's Bairbre de Brun facing some tough funding decisions.