AT the risk of being considered the, Rent-a-gob tendency', I would like to advise David Chaytor MP, and John Jesky, chairman of the Pennine Acute Trust to look at the history of the North Manchester Area Health Authority (under any of its names from 1976-1999) when I was an employee.

In 1976 this authority consisted of North Manchester General, The Jewish; Northern; Ancoats and the infectious diseases Monsall Hospital.

The first four in 1976 had medical and surgical patients and a speciality.

It was decided (as the Pennine Trust proposes now) that elective surgery should be at The Jewish, medical at the Northern and some surgery and orthopaedic at Ancoats.

However, patients do not bring just their affected organ and the whole person can have other, unforeseen, problems. The result was registrars racing about in taxis to see desperately ill patients in the other hospitals.

They, therefore, closed the small hospitals one by one and everything went to North Manchester General.

There we had doctors with expertise in all areas and, just as important, nurses with expertise, so calling of doctors in the night was reduced, as we could get advice from a nurse expert in the required field.

The Pennine Trust now proposes to return to the North Manchester position of the 1980s. If they do, I foresee, loss of life - and that is based on my long experience, not being a rent-a-gob'.

If present management cares about this at all, in due course, there will be only one hospital covering Bury, Rochdale, Oldham and North Manchester.

Who can guess where it will be; but doubtless it will be somewhere inconvenient to the vast majority of the residents of the four areas.

Incidentallly, sending nurses out in taxis was also in vogue just before the closure of the Jewish and again just before Ancoats closed.

It happened to me and many of my nurses at both these hospitals.

In the case of the Jewish, we were only told a few days before the move and I remember one of the surgeons turning up to see patients on the ward where he had left them the day before and they were gone. He had not been informed.

So please, learn from what has happened before and do not risk lives.

There must be many retired staff from North Manchester who know this from experience. Why not listen to them?

JEAN M PURDY Retired nursing sister/ nurse clinician, Park Avenue, Radcliffe