[lettie]

Blackburn currently provides care for the Ribble Valley and gets patients who live as far away as Slaidburn. Any extra fridges will be for the extra emergency patients who come from Burnley, many of whom will come with acute medical conditions and be admitted to acute medical wards where they will later die, as they would've done regardless of which hospital.

Blackburn will be geared up for acute emergencies and able to deal with them immediately on admission rather than being clogged up with GP cases, cuts and bruises and timewasters. There will always be people who die en route to hospital regardless of their journey time. I remember the ambulance crew bringing a young lad in dead on arrival when I was training, his injury had occurred on Bolton Rd, just down the road from BRI but he still died en route, it was devastating.