BABY boys in East Lancashire whose families want them circumcised for religious reasons, are in danger of opting for backstreet operations, because no health trust in the area will do them.

Every year there are at least 300 admissions to local hospitals for the procedure, but health bosses believe the real numbers could be far higher than that.

Many, from both Jewish and Islamic faiths, see the surgery as an important part of their beliefs.

Health chiefs are so worried that parents may opt for unchecked surgery they have written to every health trust in the area to ask them to do the surgery officially.

But no trust was prepared to take the job on.

Now the authority has decided to ask local community leaders to put pressure on to trusts in the hope that they will have more luck in persuading them to take on circumcisions.

Director of public health for East Lancashire Health Authority Stephen Morton, told a health authority board meeting: "We have been trying to progress this and are seeking to find a local trust who could provide a service of assured quality.

"Although some do provide a service, it is to a fairly limited extent. There are a fair number of circumcisions carried out each year, although we cannot tell how many of these are done for reasons other than medical ones, and we just do not have much information on complications.

"We have not had anyone taking us up on the offer we have made to the local trusts. I am a bit stumped on this at the moment."

Guidance from the Department of Health says: "Male circumcision is considered by many in the Jewish and Islamic faiths to be essential to the practice of their religion...Many also believe that if doctors were prevented from carrying out the procedure, parents would turn in greater numbers to individuals who lack the skills and experience to perform it safely and competently."

Secretary to the Lancashire Council of Mosques Abdul Hamid Qureshi, said: "We have tried to liaise with the health authority to get this done on the NHS because it is not an option, it is a religious obligation. It is not cosmetic surgery, it is part of the religion.

"It would be preferable to get it done in hospital, but at the moment we have to go to GPs and pay to have it done privately. It is not ideal and we would like the health authority to look into it. It is also quite expensive."

Mr Qureshi said the tradition was for the surgery to be performed within seven days of a child's birth, when the skin was delicate.

Dorothy Walsh, chair of Blackburn Community Health Council, said: "This has been a problem for a long, long while. I am glad now we are making more inroads to go further along that road for those children."

Janaid Qureshi, non-executive director of the health authority board, said he knew of a handful of GPs who conducted circumcisions privately but in isolation.

Members agreed to ask local community groups to put pressure on to trusts, in the hope that they would be able to persuade them to take on the service.

The public health team has also put together an information leaflet which gives parents advice on circumcision, including wound care and possible complications, which they hope to release soon.