EYE HORROR returned to Burnley General Hospital today with news that an elderly widow was blinded in one eye after infection by a deadly bug was triggered during a routine cataract operation.

Grandmother Lavina Eastwood's ordeal comes just 11 months after the nightmare scenario in which three patients had eyes removed after picking up a virus in cataract operations carried out on the same day in the Burnley Unit.

Burnley Health Trust chiefs were quick to point out that the latest infection was not the same virulent bug which wreaked havoc last year and resulted in the temporary closure of the eye unit.

Department service manager, Val Smith, said it was a patient-borne organisms, common in cataract surgery, but which the hospital had not been able to control.

Mrs Eastwood, 79, was rushed to a specialist opthalmology department in Liverpool where surgeons carried out two emergency operations to save her eye.

They saved the eye - but her sight has gone.

The chilling echo of last year's tragedies comes on the very day that the Burnley hospital took over all in-patient eye care for patients from the Blackburn, Hyndburn and Ribble Valley district. The confidence-crippling development has left Mrs Eastwood "scared and shattered" and her family angry and distraught.

They are considering lodging a formal complaint or taking legal action over their mother's treatment.

During last year's furore, Burnley Health Trust blamed inaccurate manufacturer's guidelines for sterilisation of equipment for the infections and guaranteed there could be no repeat of the incidents.

Mrs Eastwood, back at her Deerstone Avenue bungalow in Burnley today was still very shaken and upset.

Mrs Eastwood, who ran her own hairdressing salon in Rosegrove for 50 years said: "I could see and read perfectly well before the operation. Now I am totally blind in my left eye. I just feel scared."

Her daughter, Mrs Betty McKnight, said: "It has left her in a terrible state. She is a totally different woman - all her confidence has gone."

The family is considering lodging a complaint with the Community Health Council or taking legal action.

A hospital spokesman said problems with the virus in this case were triggered by surgery.

He added: "We are always extremely upset by incidents like this and will be in touch with the family to explain everything."

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