A THREE-month-old baby with breathing problems had to be rushed out of the county to a hospital in Gloucestershire after her doctor lost his battle to find an NHS bed in Worcester.

The infant's mum said the GP sent her and the baby home from his surgery and told them to wait for a phone call.

Two hours later, he had tried five hospitals and been told there was no bed available in Worcestershire. The nearest was in Cheltenham.

City councillor Mike Layland claimed the tot's distraught mother, who did not want to be named, contacted him to highlight the incident.

He said it demonstrated the "desperate" condition of Worcestershire's NHS Trust.

He was "deeply shocked" the baby had to be rushed by car 30 miles to Cheltenham General and accused health chiefs of allowing the situation to worsen through constant cutbacks.

"Why has it been allowed to come to this?" he said. "It's terrible. The girl was poorly and had respiratory problems which needed immediate attention - but there wasn't anywhere local to send her.

"We shouldn't be sending patients, however old or serious, to Cheltenham because we can't find anywhere closer. Why don't we have enough facilities to cope?"

The Nunnery Wood councillor said he had been told the staff at Cheltenham were "magnificent".

"But the staff in Worcester do a superb job, despite having fewer and fewer facilities and less and less staff.

"We're being told the new hospital will rectify the problems, but I'm not convinced. This is a problem of not enough facilities for the amount of people in Worcestershire."

Janet-Marie Clark, spokeswoman for the Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, said patient confidentiality meant she was unable to comment on specific cases.

"However, the trust works collaboratively with other hospitals in the West Midlands and south of the county to provide the best use of resources for caring for sick babies," she added.