WHILE it was good to see two local MPs working together to prevent the downgrading of Darlington Memorial Hospital (D&S Times, Feb 4), the facts are that successive governments have centralised A&E care away from local hospitals to usually one major trauma centre.

Bearing in mind that we have had a mild winter and no real flu outbreaks, the NHS is under immense pressure as it is having to cope with increased demands from a greatly increased population and, paradoxically because many diseases have been eradicated, it is an ageing population (we should be proud of this).

Any comparisons with Europe place us near the bottom of league tables – ie doctors per patients; hospital beds per 1,000 people; average maternity stay.

I have worked at the Royal Blackburn Infirmary which has featured on the BBC News this week highlighting some of the pressures the NHS is facing. It is in meltdown and the Government’s “Sustainability and Transformation Initiative”, which will reduce one in six A&E units up to a total of 33 across the country, would be catastrophic.

We already have patients waiting more than 12 hours in corridors in hospitals miles from home where a rare spare ambulance has taken them.

We all know of someone who has had elective surgery cancelled due to emergencies – I know one lady who was prepped for four days before a theatre was “free”.

One Government initiative is to have care closer to home, but it is not going to happen as most local hospitals are being downgraded or closed.

We are one of the richest countries in the world and yet the government is attempting to save money to overcome the £22bn shortfall in the NHS budget in 2021.

Successive governments have not planned for the future.

Not enough medical and caring staff have been trained, and we have become dependent on migrants and costly PFI programmes which suck large amounts of money out of budgets paying the interest off borrowed money.

Put simply, the NHS needs a massive cash input to cope, but it also needs to be run more efficiently and managed better. This is what the public expects, and the public, after all, are the NHS’ customers who pay via taxes for the service.

Please save our NHS.

John H Nuttall, Leyburn