HEART patients throughout Morecambe Bay are benefiting from extra cash being pumped into heart services, but there are still 27 people who have waited longer than nine months for bypass surgery.

Morecambe Bay Health Authority's director of public health Dr Nick Gent said Government money was already having an impact on heart services across South Lakeland, Furness and North Lancashire.

But it would take three to five years for a real improvement in the waiting times for patients who needed a bypass, he said.

Dr Gent was updating MBHA members on how the authority was performing against the new NHS National Service Framework for coronary heart disease, which lays out a countrywide policy for treating the disease.

Morecambe Bay already has its own specialist smoking cessation service, said Dr Gent, with three specialist advisers offering one-to-one support.

Dr Gent said they understood the authority's £100,000 bid to have three rapid access chest pain clinics in Morecambe Bay has been successful.

The clinics, which would be located at Kendal's Westmorland General Hospital, Furness General Hospital in Barrow and the Royal Lancaster Infirmary, would be available for patients experiencing chest pain.

A team of medical staff would be able to give the patient a diagnosis on the day he or she attends.

Dr Gent said they had already received some extra funding for equipment, and hoped to get a total of £90,000 worth of equipment for the clinics.

From December, Morecambe Bay is also to have a second cardiologist.

But Dr Gent said improvements in waiting times for those who needed bypass surgery would take longer.

At the end of July there were nine patients in Morecambe Bay who had waited between nine and 11 months for a bypass, and 18 who had waited longer than one year.

The Westmorland Gazette's HEARTLINE campaign has highlighted these lengthy waiting times, and the pain and discomfort which the patients suffer.

Dr Gent said a new centre was needed for heart surgery in the region before real progress would be made, but more general heart services were already improving.

"Considerable progress has been made locally already," he said.