In response to consultant surgeon Mr Tomlinson’s letter about vascular services on the Morecambe Bay area (Letters, September 20, ‘Service loss is major threat’), health care should not be based on postal codes.

We should all be treated as equally as possible, whether city dwellers or others.

I should like to stress the following points:

1. The distance, difficulty and time taken to travel from the area to Lancaster or further, including the time for ambulances to reach the patient, often in remote areas, and for visits of family members, is already much greater in our area.

2. The fact that the normal population of this area has one of the highest percentage of people of 65 years or older.

3. The additional fact that in the holiday periods the population is considerably increased. This extra number includes many unfit people not accustomed to physical exertion who are likely to develop heart and lung problems, and adventurous people who have accidents while climbing the fells, all of whom add to the need for quick admission to a hospital.

4. The fact that patients do better if they have regular visits from family and friends, rather than feeling remote, with poorer or older members unable to afford or to unable to travel far to visit.

Do visitors realise that when they come to an area like ours, that their citizens’ rights are violated? They become second class citizens as far as medical treatment is concerned.

Medical care should not be based on a ‘one size fits all’, which results in hospital beds based on population numbers only, resulting in local hospitals for city dwellers and distant hospitals for others.

It should, as far as possible, be equal care for all.

Peter Storey, Kendal