OF THE government's plan to curb the shortage of intensive care beds for critically ill children, too little, too late, is the verdict today of a bereaved East Lancashire mother whose 21-month-old sick son had to travel all the away to Stoke on Trent to be admitted to one of these vital beds.

That may seem a strong judgment in the light of what, after all, is an improvement.

But it is fair to say that what is being done is not enough - and that it is being done in a flawed fashion.

This issue is, of course, shot through with emotion.

For no desperately-ill child should have to be ferried about the country in search of one of these special beds - as was the highly-publicised lot last year of 10-year-old NIcholas Geldard who was transferred, already brain dead, more than 50 miles to Leeds after collapsing in Stockport and of little Lewis Jackson, of Clitheroe, who had to go as far as Stoke.

Nor should anyone have to endure the added anguish to which parents are exposed when their children are literally turned away from local hospitals - as has happened repeatedly because of the shortage of children's intensive care beds. But if Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell has reacted dispassionately to the situation, he has also failed to respond rationally.

That must be the case when he announces plans to provide 37 more of these beds in the next two years, despite the NHS Executive's recommendation that an extra 55 should be opened in the next year.

This is clearly a half-measure.

It is far from sufficient to end the life-or-death lottery that stems from what, given the spurning of the expert advice on the level of need, is evidently deliberate under-provision.

And that shameful outlook, doubtlessly coloured by cost considerations, is compounded by the fact that this qualified improvement will be paid for by the reduction of health care elsewhere in the system.

This must be the case as the Department of Health is not providing an extra funding for these new beds.

True, government has a duty to spread resources as efficiently as possible and it can never meet all the demands to which the NHS is subject.

But for this economy to extend to the lives of little children being kept at higher risk than the health service itself advises is basically wrong.

And it is disgracefully wrong if those lives are being risked to save costs that might be turned into tax cuts for political gain.

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