ANYONE planning a drive to improve dental health would target resources at where the problem is worst.

But what happens when health chiefs in East Lancashire - notorious as one of the country's major blackspots for rotten teeth - bid for government cash to combat the situation?

They get absolutely nothing.

Yet, every other health authority in the North West is awarded cash.

The problem, it seems, is that East Lancashire has fallen foul of a bureaucratic funding formula - because local health chiefs exceeded the Department of Health's ceiling for bids.

But, though it is acknowledged that our region has a major dental health problem, nothing, it seems, can be done to rectify the error of East Lancashire getting nothing at all despite its needs being greater than the other areas which have been granted government cash.

Why should we suffer for this bureaucratic idiocy?

Common sense says we have a problem and need the resources now to deal with it.

And common sense should spur someone at the Department of Health to end this nonsense forthwith.

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