HEALTH services throughout Bolton have been stretched to the limit over Christmas with record numbers of emergency cases.

Doctors, ambulance crews and hospital staff have been working flat out to cope with the huge numbers of out of hours and 999 calls.

Bolton District Medical Services, who operate Bolton's out of hours GP service, say they have been pushed to the limit over the festive period because of the mass of urgent calls arriving at the Landmark House headquarters.

Greater Manchester Ambulance Service have recorded their busiest Christmas for years and have been dealing with 1,000 emergency 999 calls a day.

Double

On Sunday the service dealt with 1,136 calls over 24 hours.

Compared with the same day last it was almost double the number of emergency calls it dealt with last year. On Saturday too there were 1,039 emergency calls made - a massive 51 per cent increase on last year.

Many of the calls were to deal with people struck down by flu. And despite the fact that many hwealth staff have also been laid low with flu, North-west region accident and emergency units have recorded one of their busiest Christmases ever.

Royal Bolton Hospital has been so stretched that on Saturday many patients were forced to wait several hours while beds were found for them.

And on Sunday the decision was taken to open a surgical ward which had been closed over the Christmas and New Year period because no operations had been scheduled.

Beds on another ward were also used for medical cases and although some of the patients admitted were suffering from flu related complications, there was a mix of conditions needing attention.

Hugh Lamont a spokesman for the NHS Executive in the North West said hospitals across the region had been experiencing one of their busiest periods ever.

Many off duty staff have been called in to cover staff sickness.

Mr Lamont said: "In many cases there were young, fit people arriving by ambulance to casualty units who had been unable to get hold of an on-call doctor.

"In such cases we are urging people to go to bed and drink plenty of fluids. Hospital is not the obvious place for such people."

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