DESPITE our repeated calls for a radical overhaul of the National Health Service, we have accepted the Government's insistence that it cannot happen overnight.

Decades of chronic NHS under-funding have left the Blair administration with possibly its toughest challenge. Some progress has undoubtedly been made, but even the Government would admit that it is not enough.

The fact that Health Secretary Alan Milburn has been forced to announce that health authorities will be allowed to send patients abroad, as a way of ending long delays, is evidence enough that the health service in this country is unable to cope with its workload.

It is not an ideal solution, but it is certainly better than patients being left to suffer on waiting lists in Britain. If it is the only way they can be treated in the short-term, then so be it.

Two years ago, The Northern Echo - through the "Chance To Live" campaign, launched after the death of Darlington father-of-two Ian Weir - exposed the glaring gap between heart bypass waiting times in this country compared with the rest of Europe.

In other European countries, the average waiting time for bypass surgery was three months, compared with a year in this country - a totally unacceptable equation.

Now, heart patients will be among those who are left with no option but to travel abroad for treatment rather than risk the same fate as Ian Weir here in Britain.

Even then, Mr Milburn has admitted that it will take time for the necessary systems - and possibly legislation - to be put in place.

We understand that support from foreign health services has to be sought as a way of taking pressure off our own waiting lists.

But it remains a terrible indictment of the National Health Service and another stark reminder that, while treatment abroad may be a necessary short-term measure, the Government still has to deliver on its promise to provide a health service which can cater for those in the greatest need.