A MUM has criticised the NHS non-emergency service after claiming she had to wait nine hours to get medication for her ill son.

Amanda Douglas, from Darcy Lever, says she was faced with hours of delays after calling 111 for help on October 15.

The mum-of-three said that she called the service just after 12pm suspecting her two-year-old son Joshua was suffering from conjunctivitis.

He was later diagnosed with conjunctivitis, a chest infection and tonsillitis

From there she was directed to the BARDOC, which provides out of hours medical care for Bury, Heywood, Middleton, Rochdale and Bolton, and says she had to speak to two nurses and two doctors before getting a prescription for her son. Ms Douglas, aged 36, said: “They explained because it wasn’t desperate they couldn’t get a doctor out to me and a nurse would phone.

“The nurse phoned five hours later and said I had to speak to a doctor, it took another two hours for a doctor to call.

“They were based in Manchester and said they couldn’t prescribe any medication so I went back through the system and was phoned by another doctor in Manchester who did issue a prescription.

“It took more than eight hours to get my child some treatment!

“Children and elderly people used to be prioritised until they brought this service in. I think it’s disgusting.”

Ms Douglas, who also has two children aged seven and 14, said she was warned that Bolton’s Waters Meeting Health Centre drop in was packed out and was advised to go to Fallowfield or Rochdale if she wanted to see a doctor. However she says she could not travel due to mobility problems and no access to a car as her partner, Partick, was away until the evening.

A prescription was eventually sent to Waters Meeting health centre from where she collected it.

A spokesman for North West Ambulance Service, which operates the 111 call centre said: “We are aware of the concerns raised by our patient and are currently investigating this jointly with the out of hours provider.

“We are sorry to hear that we did not meet Ms. Douglas’s expectations.

“The NHS 111 Service in the North West is available for patients to call when they need urgent medical care.

“All patients have a full clinical assessment and as part of the service, we signpost people to the next appropriate place for their condition – which in this case was the local Out of Hours Doctors service.”