THE terrifying statistics that 20 per cent of patients died in the Royal Bolton Hospital within 30 days of emergency admission, following a heart attack, during 1998-99, was enough to heap even more problems on our overstretched hospital.
On top of this, the death rate at the RBH, within 30 days of emergency surgery, is well above the national average.
Last year, a report in the BEN revealed that the rate at which people die young, have cancer, suffer circulatory disease, and die in accidents, is well above average. More elderly people are admitted to hospital as emergency cases, and there are more avoidable deaths in the area than anywhere else.
Health chiefs blame all this on the poor health of Bolton people, caused mainly by the pockets of deprivation and our industrial and mining past.
Anne Kaneen -- who has done tremendous work for coronary care in Bolton -- predictably says our hospital is one of the best. Anne puts the blame on local people's lifestyles. The BEN also backs this view.
But surely Bolton is not unique in that many of it's population enjoy chips with everything, no more than it is unique in having a strong industrial past, or pockets of social economic deprivation.
Towns that compare with Bolton -- past and present -- have hospitals that, according to these performance tables, are doing very much better than the RBH.
We need to know why!
Brian Derbyshire
Ribchester Grove
Bolton
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