ACCORDING to the Citizen's report, plans to merge Preston's health services with Chorley and South Ribble are merely 'suggestions' to encourage debate (Citizen, October 28).

Hugh Lamont of the NHS Executive North West should cut the cackle and simply get on with the merger, which was planned decades ago.

As for the claim by Councillor Bill Chadwick that such a merger would result in specialist cancer services being centralised at Christie Hospital in Manchester, he is wrong.

We have our own specialist cancer services here in Preston already, funded entirely by central NHS funds, and likely to expand in the future.

Christies is threatened with closure, I understand, and rightly so - in my opinion. No modern NHS facility should be dependent on charitable contributions, to either establish or run such facilities.

We are approaching the Year 2000, not living in the 1930s, or earlier. Hospitals don't run on charity, or hype.

They run on central government funds and benefit all who need them, and all who work in them.

E Timoroksa, Preston

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.