ON THE face of it, a £10 million boost for the NHS in the form of savings on the blood collection service seems like a good idea.

A shake-up of testing and processing will bring benefits for donors, hospitals and patients, promises Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell.

He claims the streamlining will cut bureaucracy and reduce overcapacity to provide a leaner, far more efficient service.

Administrative functions now carried out at 13 centres will be located at only three, and processing and testing will cease at five centres including our nearest at Lancaster.

Blood collected in our area by the Lancaster teams will now have to go to Manchester for testing, amid assurances this will actually be saving money.

All this with the loss of 300 jobs, some of them in Lancaster which will stop processing and testing next March.

The sugar coating to this bitter pill is the assurance that threatened centres, including Lancaster, are now safe from closure, and will continue to supply a blood service and other specialist functions.

But for how long?

And can we be 100 per cent certain these measures will bring a better service for everyone or will it be a poorer service?

Already there are rumours the shake-up could be the thin end of the wedge. There are fears it could be a pre-med to get us ready for deeper surgery in years to come with the closure of even more centres.

But there are those who believe even the current streamlining has cut far too deep.

The Manufacturing Science Finance Union is questioning the shake-up with the claim that it has been based on flawed data on the estimated overcapacity of the service.

Its spokesman John Simmons has gone so far as to accuse the Government of "savaging the testing and processing of blood and ripping the guts out of the rest of the service."

Strong words from someone at the hub of the service which is literally the life blood of our country.

Mr Dorrell has promised a new Blood Donors' Charter to inform donors of their rights and a National User Group to ensure hospital consultants are satisfied with the service.

Let's hope these are not merely cosmetic measures and that if, in a few months' time, the new service proves to be too weak to meet our needs, he will give consideration to resuscitating vital parts of the system.

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