THE distressing case of an East Lancashire grandmother facing a wait of two and a half years for vital heart surgery tells graphically what an agony the waiting lists are.

For the grim possibility actually confronting desperate 62-year-old Mrs Mary Duxbury, of Blackburn, after more than a year in the queue is that she might die before she is given a date for her operation.

It is terrible that anyone so seriously ill should have their ordeal added to by such anxiety.

And it is easy to understand the disillusionment of Mrs Duxbury's husband when, watching his wife's health deteriorate as she faces of wait of as much as another 18 months, he finds that after a lifetime's contributions to the NHS, it is not there for his wife when she needs it.

The best it has been able to offer her so far is a formal apology.

The Blackpool Victoria Hospital Trust, to whom East Lancashire heart-disease patients are referred, says it is doing all it can to deal with the backlog.

But the evident and harsh reality is that, even with the money the government has allocated to reduce waiting lists, the resources hospitals have are not just inadequate, but seriously insufficient.

That must be the situation when people with life-threatening illnesses like Mrs Duxbury are forced to wait two and a half years for an operation. Health minister Frank Dobson speaks of his embarrassment at Labour's failure to cut the waiting lists, as it promised in one of its key election pledges.

But cases like this are much more than embarrassment. They are a disgrace.

And that disgrace will not be dispelled by Mr Dobson threatening hospital bosses with the sack if they fail to cut the waiting lists.

He is holding a gun to their head and at the same time withholding the ammunition that enables them to do as he expects.

For, even accepting the fact the NHS can never have all the money it needs to meet all the demands placed upon it, nevertheless it must never be so direly under-resourced that people needing such urgent and vital treatment as heart surgery must wait as long as this and face dying before they get it.

In cases like this, there really ought to be contingency cash and measures to eradicate the lists and the dreadful anxiety that goes with them - such as using NHS money to pay for private surgery for those so desperately in need of it.

In the past, we have seen that happen - often as a political expediency when elections are due. And if there is a moral issue to the use of public cash for private health care, it is, surely, dispelled by the need of people like Mrs Duxbury for action now.

Mr Dobson should stop apologising for the situation and really do something about it.

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