LONG delays facing people who want treatment under the National Health Service are a continuing source of complaint.

A constant battle is being waged to try to reduce waiting lists for operations sometimes because there are not the staff and theatre space to cope with demand.

With such pressure on resources it seems incredible that patients are wasting £2million each year by failing to use drugs that have been prescribed to them.

What makes the waste even more difficult to understand is that the patients are spending time and trouble going to the doctors in the first place, waiting to be seen and then getting prescriptions before failing to actually take their medicine.

Once they have been prescribed and collected the medicines have to be paid for and cannot be re-used.

Those wasted range from ordinary painkillers to more expensive drugs. One person in Burnley returned a month's supply of anti-infective tablets costing £1,200.

Now a campaign is being launched under the title "One Pot Pays For All" to put across the point that, for example, the £2m wasted on unused drugs in East Lancashire would have provided badly needed cataract operations for 2,000 people.

The message that the NHS is not a free service and must not be abused needs to be hammered home hard.