HOSPITAL bosses have vowed that nurses will turn Muslim patients' beds to face Mecca if asked.

Yorkshire health chiefs hit the headlines this week after it emerged that staff there had been moving beds for prayers five times a day to make Muslims' stay in hospital "more comfortable".

A spokesman for East Lancashire Hospitals Trust, which runs both Burnley General Hospital and the Royal Blackburn Hospital, said that although no requests had yet been received, staff would move beds if requested to do so.

Lesley Gaw, operational manager for East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust said: "To accommodate Muslim patients who wish to pray during their stay in hospital, each ward has a quiet room which has an arrow showing which direction Mecca is in.

"Although to date we have not had any requests to move patients who are in bed to face Mecca to pray, we would try to accommodate individuals' requests if it was clinically safe to do so and did not cause too much disruption to the running of the ward."

Chairman of Blackburn with Darwen Council's health scrutiny committee Coun Roy Davies, and Burnley Council leader Gordon Birtwistle, backed the hospital's stance.

Coun Davies said: "For Muslims, Jehovah's Witnesses and people of many other religions, their religion is a way of life.

"If they want to have that religion as a way of life, then who am I to say that they shouldn't?

"If the hospital is happy with it and the people who want this service are happy with it, then it should be done.

"As long as other people and other services are not suffering, I can't see anything against it."

Coun Birtwistle added: "I suppose if a person is bedridden then they really have to do it.

"They should make an effort to ensure people can walk to the prayer room where possible, but if they can't and people insist on it, then that's what the hospital should do.

"Accommodating Muslims is the same as accommodating any religion."