PEOPLE living in rural areas may not be able to access the healthcare that they need, according to a new report.

The British Medical Association the professional association for doctors has produced a report that says that despite the image of the "rural idyll", there were people living in pockets of deprivation alongside others living in relative affluence.

Remoteness, a lack of public transport, and the centralisation of services could all put people in rural areas at a disadvantage, according to the report called Healthcare in a Rural Setting.

In addition, the proportion of older people living in rural settings is higher than in the general UK population, and therefore doctors may have to deal with more cases of chronic illness such as heart disease, stroke and mental illness.

The report highlights the farmers' health project, run by Morecambe Bay Primary Care Trust, as an example of a scheme designed to bridge the gap between people's healthcare needs and the service that is provided.

Morecambe Bay Primary Care Trust director of public health Frank Atherton said that people in rural areas often had different health needs. For example, among people in the farming community, isolation and stress meant that mental health services were very important.

Dr Atherton said that he agreed with what the BMA had found, and added that in Morecambe Bay, the PCT was undertaking audit work about equality in health, partly to establish if people in rural areas had worse access to services than in other areas.

"In this country there's still a lack of understanding about the differences in rural and urban health," he said.

"We certainly recognise the problems that they (the BMA) are describing."