Health bosses for South Cumbria say they are pleased with the way the NHS and the people of the area responded to the outbreak of Legionnaires disease in Barrow.

Ian Cummings, chief executive of Morecambe Bay Hospitals Trust, told a meeting of the trust's board this week that although there had been five deaths, local health services had coped admirably with the crisis.

" Obviously we would have preferred if no-one had died, we are here to provide services to make people better as quickly as possible.

Tragically five people died in the Legionnaires disease outbreak," he said.

But he added that the trust's response had confounded expert predictions that 15 per cent of people who contracted the disease would die.

The life-saving measures taken by the trust included dosing the people of Barrow with a whole year' s supply of two different antibiotics and developing a special patient database which is now to be made available to other hospital trusts for times of emergency.

Another system credited with helping save lives was a pre-intensive care assessment system which could now be introduced full time.

Mr Cummings said there had been 134 patients confirmed with Legionnaires disease, 2,500 - one in 30 of the Barrow population - had been tested for the disease.

During the crisis, he said, back-up supplies had been flown in from Holland and the USA and health authorities in the north had rallied around and supplied medical staff and other help.

Seven hundred routine operations were cancelled to free-up resources to fight the outbreak.

That has put the trust behind on its waiting list targets, but a team is now working on how to shift the back-log.