DOCTORS are warning Health Secretary Alan Milburn that his crusade against heart disease is doomed unless there is a massive injection of resources into surgeries.

North-East GP Dr George Rae, who sits on the national council of the British Medical Association, said a lack of nurses and medical manpower left the Government's much-vaunted strategy to combat heart disease facing certain failure.

"It is a huge undertaking which takes time and effort and cannot be done without adequate human resources," said Dr Rae, who practises in Whitley Bay.

But the Department of Health dismissed the claim. A spokesman suggested it was a ploy in an increasingly acrimonious industrial dispute with the Government which will see hundreds of doctors take part in the country's first unofficial strike by GPs on May 1.

In March 2000, Mr Milburn announced a multi-million pound plan to cut Britain's annual toll of 180,000 heart disease victims by 40 per cent by 2010.

The package included more surgeons, new fast-track chest pain clinics and reducing waiting times for surgery.

The programme was partly a response to The Northern Echo's A Chance To Live campaign to improve Britain's appalling record on heart disease which sees 500 patients a year die while on the waiting lists.

Family doctors play a crucial part in the programme for coronary heart disease and GPs were supposed to have drawn up a register of their patients who are at risk of developing heart disease.

By this time next year, patients with heart disease should be receiving "structured care" from their family doctor.

But some GPs claim that they are so over-worked and under-resourced that they will be unable to achieve the Government's targets.

Discontent among rank-and-file GPs has reached such a pitch that they are threatening to close hundreds of surgeries around the country on Tuesday in an unofficial protest against working conditions - action which is not backed by the BMA.

Dr Rae said: "Doctors are without adequate numbers of health visitors and nurses to help them provide the service they are expected to deliver."

The heart blueprint was "laudable" but without extra resources it could not be done, he said.

He was echoed by Middlesbrough GP Dr John Canning, secretary of Cleveland Local Medical Committee and a member of the BMA GP Committee.

He said: "The National Service Frameworks (NSFs) are not deliverable. They are well thought out but it hasn't had the investment it needs.

"In my own group practice, we have put in combined bids for £74,000 to allow us to do more, but there is only £15,000 on offer."

Dr Andrew Oakenfull, a GP in Ferryhill, County Durham, and chairman of the County Durham Local Medical Committee, said: "We have to identify people, call them in and review them as well as all the existing work we do.

"GPs are saying we can't do this because we don't have the facilities and we don't have the manpower. We agree with the plans, we would love to implement them, but we can't do it."

Belinda Linden, a cardiac nurse based at the British Heart Foundation's London headquarters, said: "At the moment we have no record of how many people have heart disease. Until we can find out, we can't move forward. It is an uphill task but it is a crucial one."

A Department of Health source said: "The truth is that GPs are getting on with delivering the NSF on heart disease.

"The rate of growth in NHS spending is twice what it has traditionally been, and primary care has a much larger share of a bigger cake."