HOSPITAL bosses have been handed more than £140,000 to boost casualty services in Bolton.

Extra staff will be employed to cope with increasing pressures on accident and emergency from patients living in the Leigh and Salford areas.

Wigan and Bolton Health authority has already spent £150,000 to try to cope with the pressure.

Pressures

This latest investment of £143,228 - agreed at yesterday's meeting of the Health Authority - will take A and E closer to target levels of funding.

Commenting on the recent unprecedented increase in A and E admissions at the Royal Bolton Hospital, particularly over the Christmas and New Year period, chairman Mrs Lene Pickford, said: "The whole of the health service has been under enormous pressures recently and I would like to say a very big thank you to the Trusts, the GPs and the ambulance service and all the people employed by them."

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