THE East Lancashire Hospice could be just a year away from becoming a centre of excellence.

A public appeal is aiming to raise £1.3 million to extend the building by developing a day therapy unit.

But the effort to double the size of the hospice would not have been possible without the pioneering vision of Dr Merton Seigleman. Chief reporter JASON HEAVEY caught up with the man who made it all possible.

HIS quietly spoken words fail to hide his overwhelming modesty.

When asked if he saw himself as a pioneer, Dr Merton Seigleman, his reddened cheeks glowing with embarrassment, finally admits that he simply helped to "set things going".

Anybody linked with the East Lancashire Hospice knows he did much more.

Without his dogged determination and trailblazing spirit, there would probably be no hospice in Blackburn.

When he laid the first hospice foundation in May 1983, it was the realisation of a personal dream for Dr Seigleman.

Sixteen years on, you would think the former consultant anaesthetist would allow himself a self-satisfied grin as he mulls over the exciting plans to extend the building.

But, instead, he simply puts the proposals down to the "evolutionary process" of the hospice's development.

Dr Seigleman, now 75, retired in June 1993 from running the hospice. He had officially retired as a hospital anaesthetist in 1988, but stayed on as consultant-in-charge of the hospice on nominal pay.

The legacy he left was a far cry form the pain relief clinics he first ran while working at Blackburn Infirmary as an anaesthetist.

But it was Blackburn's good fortune that it was blessed with a medic who was forward thinking enough to realise that a hospice was a medical necessity. He was even among the first to espouse the usefulness of alternative remedies, way back in the 1960s, and he was delighted when he learned that the proposed day therapy unit will offer a host of complementary treatments.

In 1981 he began to campaign for an East Lancashire Hospice to care for the district's terminally ill in the calm of a 10-bed unit within the grounds of Park Lee Hospital.

Health chiefs agreed to fund the running of the first such NHS centre in the North West if Dr Seigleman and fellow campaigners could raise £600,000 to build it.

This they did, despite a mountain of early opposition from both within and outside the health service.

"There was a lot of resistance to the idea of a hospice and I was pessimistic at first. But the response of the public was terrific.

"I suppose you could say I set things going but it was just part of the hospice's evolutionary process ."

Pain relief had always been Dr Seigleman's first interest and he practised this field of medicine on the battlefields of the Yom Kippur War in Israel.

Although born in Salford, of an English father, he maintained his staunch Zionist views and had saved up his holidays in case war broke out while he was lecturing in anaesthesia in Tel Aviv in 1971.

His Jewish religion also prompted him to study an Open University degree in history during his retirement.

"I am delighted to see these plans and I am confident the public will respond once again," he added.

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