IT was very sad to read the headline article on January 2 on the grandma returning home from hospital.

So many things have gone wrong: the ambulance team would have "handed over" this lady formally to A&E and explained why they had brought her to hospital.

Some confusion seems to have ensued in the pressured environment of the A&E department as she was treated for another complaint.

Then, the hospital decided not to admit her failed to trigger the "take home and tuck up" service run by Age UK which plugs the gaps in the state system.

We read last year the Red Cross talking about a humanitarian crisis in A&E and others describing the NHS spiralling down into a "third world service".

Both descriptions now seem very apt: an old lady standing in the rain in her nightie at 10pm on a cold winter night.

This is what austerity in the NHS looks like. We spend less and less on the NHS: the USA spends 17 per cent of its GDP on its health service, and France and Germany 11 per cent. We spend 8.5 per cent and we are cutting £22 billion from that up to 2020. Yet we are a rich country.

We need Bolton politicians both local and national to do much more to hold the Government to account for these failures in the NHS.

I also think we in Bolton need to support our doctors and nurses in the health service who are working so hard in dire conditions.

If we are casting around to blame someone for this sad incident we should blame the Government for underfunding the NHS.

Christine Howarth

Save Bolton NHS