THE DEATH of East Lancashire baby Lewis Jackson was a tragedy that will touch the hearts of parents everywhere.

Aged just 21 months, he died in an intensive care bed at Stoke-on-Trent, 80 miles from his Clitheroe home because no bed was available in the North West.

But what is more dreadful still is the claim today that little Lewis was not just unlucky in being in desperate need at a time when all specialist care accommodation in the region happened to be occupied when he became critically ill last December.

For as Lewis's grieving parents today took steps towards suing health chiefs, it was disclosed that more than 50 seriously sick children have been turned away from intensive care units in the North West so far this year.

In other words, the awful experience of his family - who were forced to drive him all the way to Stoke for vital medical help - is a routine one visited on dozens of others in our region on an almost daily basis.

This is shocking and unacceptable.

Everyone accepts that the National Health Service has finite resources with which to meet demands and, at times of acute pressure, some patients will, unfortunately, become victims of temporary shortfalls of provision.

But there is no good excuse for that being a virtual norm.

Rationing of care because of rare and adverse circumstance is understandable.

Strategic under-provision of a vital service, which it now seems that we have in our region, is quite deplorable.

And if the action begun by the tragically let-down Jackson family does anything to end that scandal and shock the health chiefs into action, we wish them well, for then their son will not have died in vain.

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