The Sisters were in charge of ward cleanliness and we also had two kitchen Sisters in charge of the maids and meal times.

Matron did more work than the present chief nurses and was in charge of everything to do with nursing care. We had two sister tutors, and consultants lectured and examined us. We were a voluntary hospital in a city. My home was 65 miles away but we had a railway and so could visit.

When I went home on holiday, I had it spoilt because a relative with a very large family could not afford all her rations and could not afford to pay to belong to the District Nurse Association or to the Hospital Fund.

The GP asked me to teach her how to give herself insulin. I had to give it twice a day. Half her children got diabetes. I knew before the NHS discovered that malnourishment was a cause of diabetes. Now I have diabetes because the multiplicity of chemicals have destroyed the antioxidant vitamins in the process of detoxification.

In rural areas, it costs more to receive NHS care at the point of need because we are so far from the point of need, and the civil servants award finance on numbers of people and so less populated areas are disadvantaged.

In the winter of 1962-63, I was a trained district nurse, midwife, health visitor and worked from home. Floods and snow can make the roads impassable and the maternity hospital was 40 miles away.

Fortunately, there were no abnormal deliveries and we managed. This is unsatisfactory. The district hospitals are still 40 miles away and the centre of excellence twice as far. Urgent cases and many babies may not live to get there.

We should be grateful for free health care, but we do need it to be easier and cheaper to obtain in rural areas. Elderly people are disadvantaged especially in rural areas where there are no volunteers. I missed out.

Retired people are helping each other to get to a hospital because of poor transport. The ambulance service is not always available.

The hospital staff do wonders with inadequate resources but there are too many clerks and too few medical and nursing staff and especially physiotherapists.

From: Steven Booth, Caverswall Road, Blythe Bridge.

FOR a patient and their family to contact each other while in hospital, St James's Hospital in Leeds has a patient telephone system which charges 49p per minute (peak) and 39p off-peak.

At a time of crisis and when a lot of patients are pensioners, this I believe is an highly profiteering amount. £10 for 20 minutes.

My father is in hospital and I live 100 miles away. To date, I have managed to make most contact over the ward phone, but my father, the patient, is directed towards the above patient telephone service which would be fine if reasonable rates were charged. Who is profiteering out of crisis?


We must end these preventable tragedies


From: Stephanie Trotter, President & Director, CO-Gas Safety, Claygate, Surrey,

LINDA McAvan's article "Tourists need protection against killer gas" was excellent (Yorkshire Post, July 9). We totally agree that tourists deserve peace of mind and there should be better protection against poisoning by carbon
monoxide (CO).

As was pointed out, the dangers are not just abroad; a man died in a hotel in Newquay and 100 people were evacuated. Also, people die and are injured in the UK in their own homes from faulty cooking and heating appliances emitting a silent killer most people do not know even exists.

CO-Gas Safety is an independent registered charity and has almost certainly the best data on CO deaths and injuries in the UK. Why hasn't Government or industry got better data? In the
12 years, five months (from September 1995 to February 2008) in the UK, we found a total of 493 deaths from accidental CO and 3,763 near misses of which 1,948 required hospital treatment.

These deaths and injuries are the ones we know about. We write to coroners every year and after every death that we hear about through our cuttings service. Most coroners very kindly respond to us. We suspect these deaths and injuries are the tip of an iceberg for many reasons. Linda McAvan stated one reason, which is that the UK has no automatic test for CO on dead bodies (unlike France). We suspect that many deaths attributed to old age or heart problems are, in fact, caused by CO. GPs rarely test patients for CO. It is also almost impossible to obtain a test on appliances for CO to prove CO.

I have sat on endless committees with the fuel industry since 1997 and talked of measures to raise awareness and improve safety. But virtually no funds have been provided by these hugely wealthy industries. In 2000, the Health and Safety Commission recommended a levy on the gas suppliers to raise awareness and for research. This has never been implemented.

We are so sick of all this talking that we decided to act. Last summer, we launched a poster competition to raise awareness of the dangers
of CO aimed at 10 and 11-year-olds and 16 and 17-year-olds. There was some, but not nearly enough support from industry. Yet the industry could have launched such a poster competition years ago. The charity is underwriting around £7,000 of expenses for the competition and I am underwriting £3,000. It is high time Government forced industry to act.

The parents of Christi and Bobby Shepherd, plus Ed Balls MP, Secretary of State for Children Schools and Families, supported the poster competition initiative at an event at the House of Lords last week. A big thank you to Linda McAvan MEP, the parents of Christi and Bobby and the Yorkshire Post for highlighting this issue and pressing for EU-wide measures to stop these totally preventable tragedies.