A GENERATION of patients helped by a health watchdog group are being asked to join the organisation's own fight for survival.

Burnley, Pendle and Rossendale Community Health Council, like other CHCs throughout the country, faces being disbanded under the government's far-reaching modernisation plans for the NHS.

But the proposal to replace them with new Patient Forums and a Patient Advocacy and Liaison Service, is being strongly opposed by the health councils which have been at the forefront of ensuring good NHS services and taking up complaints for individual patients for the past 26 years.

Now the CHC is writing to thousands of patients who have benefited from the local CHC service over the years, to get behind its fight for survival.

It is asking them to back the "only truly independent voice for patient complaints" by writing to their MP to object to the proposed changes.

Chairman Frank Clifford said: "We believe there is a need for change and that we should build on the existing professional structure already in place.

"But to throw away the experience and expertise of the CHCs in a very complicated and ever-changing health service would be totally wrong."

Coun Clifford said Patient Forums, to come into effect by 2002, are linked to health trusts and could never be truly independent.