A MAJOR cash injection to cut out mixed sex wards has saved patients' blushes at Burnley hospitals.

Now the health trust fully complies with Patient Charter standards, offering separate toilet and washing facilities for all.

The local declaration came as the Government gave all health authorities a two-year deadline for ending the humiliation of mixed sex wards.

Four out of five authorities have not yet achieved the standards for patients laid down by the last Government.

The charter specifies single sex toilet facilities as the minimum needed to reduce the indignities suffered by thousands of NHS patients each year.

The Government is now acting amid mounting frustration over slow progress on the issue. First to be targeted are the old fashioned 'Nightingale' wards, which have two long rows of beds in dormitory style.

Burnley now has only a handful of these wards and all of them are single sex.

Small wards are at times mixed, but each patient has his or her own room and there are always separate washing and toilet facilities, said a spokesman.

Health Trust nursing and quality director John Hyde, said: "We fully comply with the Patients Charter requirements. We have invested a great amount of money on this in recent years."

Mr Hyde said he could not give a guarantee some wards may temporarily go mixed sex - but only in winter emergency situations when there could be a large and unexpected inflow of patients.

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