WHAT is happening to our National Health Service? In the past if one wished to see the doctor you went along to the surgery and after a wait you were dealt with.

This was followed by ringing up to make advance appointments, this could be several days ahead, the general idea being to cut down on the crush in the waiting room, and telephones were becoming more universal. Now you can only make an appointment for the day, not in advance, the phone lines open at 8am, if you are not successful in getting through by 8.30am then forget it, there are no appointments left. The answer then is to try the following day, or the day after etc, or die in the attempt.

Following many attempts in the past to make appointments by telephone and being told that there were no more appointments available for that day, and trying, unsuccessfully, to make an appointment for a following day, today I went to the surgery at 8.05am and succeeded in making an appointment for 12 noon. What happened to all those appointments earlier? This is a ridiculous situation in this day and age, it is tantamount to saying that you cannot suddenly be taken ill, if you are you need to wait until the following day to try and make an appointment.

There was an instance last week that I witnessed, at approximately 12 noon, where a mother whose young daughter had been sent home from school because she had been diagnosed with mumps, she had been advised to take her to the doctor straight away. She was told that there were no appointments available. The poor woman was distraught. I did not see the outcome.

I strongly suspect that this system is more to do with meeting government targets than providing a satisfactory service to the patients. After all if there are no patients left at the end of the day waiting to see a doctor, ie no waiting list, then in the eyes of officialdom things must be good.

E MARSH, Offenham.