ANYONE who has suffered the misery of post operative pain will have the utmost sympathy for former RAF armourer Bill Duffy.

Mr Duffy, 60, underwent major spinal surgery but he has been told that he will have to wait nearly a year for physiotherapy, even though he has lost the movement in his right arm.

And that grim news came after waiting almost three months.

Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley NHS Trust say that the 46-week wait is the worst case scenario and is the maximum wait.

But that is little consolation to people like Mr Duffy, who can be forgiven for feeling they have been let down by the NHS. The Trust said patients were split into three categories -- urgent, treated within a week; semi-urgent, seen within three weeks; and chronic who currently have to wait up to 46 weeks.

Mr Duffy is presumably classed as chronic -- and the dictionary definition of chronic is: continuing for a long time; constantly recurring; of long duration; very bad; very serious.

But in the NHS scale of priorities that apparently does not qualify for immediate attention.

Having undergone such a serious spinal operation, we would have thought that Mr Duffy deserved more immediate attention.

The Trust says that demand on the system has tripled since 1993 and "that it is something we are well aware of".

It is all very well being aware. But it is unacceptable that a man with Mr Duffy's problems should have to wait so long for physiotherapy.

The system needs a radical overhaul.