HEALTH chiefs are ploughing an extra £126,000 into a problem-plagued service to halve the time East Lancashire patients wait for a wheelchair.

The cash will also kick-start a three-year campaign to reduce waiting lists for hundreds of sick and disabled people to as low as two weeks by the year 2000.

The move follows months of campaigning by health watchdogs and the Lancashire Evening Telegraph which has continually exposed problems with the wheelchair service.

East Lancashire Health Authority, which already has a £800,000 contract with the Disablement Services Centre to provide wheelchairs for local patients, said the cash boost was part of an ambitious strategy aimed at slashing delays in the service.

The extra money was welcomed by Eileen Scott, chairman of Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley Community Health Council. The council, which has expressed deep concern that patients, especially children, were going without appropriate wheelchairs.

She said: "We are very pleased and we hope that the extra money will provide a faster and more efficient service.

"We have been discussing ways of improving the service for some time. The argument has been that the service is under-funded and that there has not been enough money to provide the staff and equipment that the demand requires."

Patients listed for assessment at clinics are waiting between 18 and 20 weeks and then a further 10 weeks for the wheelchair to be issued.

The health authority's targets are to cut the wait to 15 weeks in 1997/98, six to eight weeks in 1998/99 and two to four weeks in 1999/2000. In February the Lancashire Evening Telegraph revealed that the Preston-based Disablement Services Centre, which also supplies wheelchairs to the rest of the county, had suspended several clinics because of a financial crisis.

Health authority vice-chairman Elizabeth Howarth said: "The health authority is delighted to be able to so positively shorten the time of a wait for a wheelchair to be issued and is committed to improving this service by purchaser and providers working in partnership."

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