FAMILY doctors today issued a plea to patients as the festive period loomed: "Only ring us if it is a true emergency."

GPs are putting the finishing touches to plans to cover the Christmas and Millennium period. But they have appealed to people only to ring 'on call' services if their problem cannot wait until the surgery is open.

People have also been urged to stock up on repeat prescriptions and make sure they have enough flu and cold remedies to allow GP services to respond to urgent cases over the festive holiday.

Some surgeries will be open at times for emergencies and urgent cases, but when practices are closed, on-call services will be available. Patients will be directed to these out of hour services when they ring their own surgery number.

People have also been urged to use their local pharmacist for advice about minor illnesses.

Dr Malcolm Ridgway, chairman of the Blackburn and District Medical Co-operative - one of the many on-call services across East Lancashire - said: "The co-operative is manned by local GPs who will prioritise cases as they would do normally to ensure that the most urgent needs are dealt with before the less urgent.

"It is essential that emergency services are used appropriately and I would appeal to patients to be prepared so they can provide their own home help wherever possible.

"Emergency, out-of-hours services will then be able to concentrate resources where they are most needed.

"We expect our phones to be very busy and I would ask patients to only ring in a true emergency, as we can only deal with medical problems that cannot wait until your normal surgery is open."

Home visits will only be made if 'medically justified,' for example when people are terminally ill, bed-bound or suffering other serious illness.

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