I HAD occasion recently to visit the podiatry clinic in Horwich.

The service, as usual, was excellent, but I was disgusted once again to read the notice from Community Podiatry in Bolton stating that during last year they carried out 82,000 treatments, but 7000 appointments were missed.

If they had been notified, they could have completely removed their waiting list of almost 3000 patients. My visit was in the early afternoon, and I gathered that two appointments had been missed that morning. Similar statements about missed appointments appear regularly in the departments of the Royal Bolton Hospital. This cavalier attitude of so many of the general public is most distressing for the conscientious staff, who are doing their utmost to please.

It would be more appropriate for the tabloid media to publicise this disgraceful state of affairs. Instead they trawl the hospitals of the country looking for the occasional mishaps with which to denigrate the NHS, and thus spreading unnecessary alarm among the general public.

B W Tyas Cooper

Breckland Drive

Heaton, Bolton