LAST evening (BEN, September 6) David Young prided himself in being instrumental in having the hospital services for this area transferred from the highly considered BRI to the General Hospital.

I wonder if he is still proud of this hospital in its present guise of something like a fairground, with a main corridor like a big dipper and transport which converts it into a replica of a railway.

It is a time consuming and money-wasting nightmare but if it was south of the Watford Gap would have long since been replaced by a modern state-of-the-art hospital which could have been run on far more economical grounds.

For instance, the corridor takes over half an hour to walk so, at the minimum wage of £3.80, costs around £7.60 for one journey. This corridor is repeated on the second floor and also the drive is equally long, also this is consistently being crossed by staff going from the main block to the 1860 block, as grim as the Tower of London, behind which are buildings like a dockland, plus the incinerator emitting poisonous, smelly fumes 24 hours per day.

From recent reports in the BEN, a rough estimate of the costs to be spent on this hotch-potch is something in the region of £10,000,000 and, after all, it will be a hospital with mixed sex wards, ventilation missing in the older wards, lights glaring in one's eyes like a Chinese torture cell, dangerous should a fire break out as one cannot find one's way out of clinics and wards, plus being extremely hazardous with plastic corridors etc.

Again, in recent weeks, I have been informed of at least three patients who have contracted infections while in-patients.

This did not surprise me as the building is impossible to maintain in a hygienic condition. One could write volumes about the financial waste which, in a modern hospital, could be applied to the employment of additional staff in all categories and so obviate the necessity of having to go to the Government with the begging bowl.

A town centre hospital would be welcomed by all patients and visitors and can be effected at very little extra cost with careful planning and cross accountancy.

This would stop people having to make four/five journeys to get to the present hospital and would reduce the traffic on Bradford Road.

Yesterday I waited for a bus on Minerva Road around 3pm and counted 200 cars passing me before the bus led a further convoy.

Miss Dorothy Waters

Winifred Road

Farnworth