A MILESTONE in health care is reached this week in Burnley with the completion of the £14million Phase Four development of the town's General Hospital - ten years after it began.

But it is not only the culmination of a giant project, one that has already seen the creation of a state-of-the-art orthopaedic unit for hip replacements, award-winning paediatric services and, now, an integrated medical assessment unit.

For the completion of Phase Four also gives the people served by Burnley General the assurance that they have the highest possible standards of health care and faster access to them - bringing, in the words of hospital trust chief executive David Chew, "the techniques, equipment and expertise of tomorrow to our area".

It is a major achievement and one whose history goes back further than the ten-year span of Phase Four - to the early 1960s when Burnley General embarked on an ambitious series of developments led by the creation of the Edith Watson maternity unit and the relocation of facilities from the former Victoria Hospital.

But as health care and demands progress at the ever-increasing pace of advances in medical science, the completion of Phase Four can only be seen as a milestone, for already, the next £20million phase is under way. It promises new and better services for stroke victims, kidney disease sufferers and ENT and dermatology patients -- so that Burnley General continues to deliver tomorrow's health care today.