SIR: I refer to your article April 11, "Family hit out over sick baby drama", and the subsequent letter "We couldn't get medicine ....."

For many years the pharmacists in Bolton have provided a voluntary out of hours call-out service, in conjunction with the local police, on an "ad-hoc basis", which had proved satisfactory in providing a 24 hour service. In recent years the Local Pharmaceutical Committee identified a decline in the number of pharmacists prepared to offer this service due to increasing work loads during the day, and increasing hours of opening. The L P C was concerned that this situation could lead to instances where patients would be unable to obtain their prescribed medicines outside of normal opening times. We therefore submitted a scheme to the Health Authority to provide a formal 24 hour on-call service, but unfortunately this has been rejected by the Health Authority.

I can only apologise to the families concerned for the distress that they endured, and hope that there are no repeat instances.

Neil Maxwell

Vice Chairman Wigan & Bolton Local

Pharmaceutical Committee

Bury Road, Bolton

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.