ANGRY residents of a remote Teesdale village have complained to health officials about plans to stop out-of-hours GP healthcare.
The two GPs in Middleton-in-Teesdale have opted out of providing a service after 6pm and before 8am on weekdays and over the weekend.
From July 1, locals will have to travel to Bishop Auckland to seek medical attention - a 42-mile round trip.
At a public meeting last week, more than 50 residents quizzed representatives from the Durham Dales Primary Care Trust (PCT), the urgent care centre in Bishop Auckland, and the GPs from Middleton's practice.
One of the residents' main concerns was the response time a new service would provide to those who are too ill to make the journey down the dale to Bishop Auckland.
Dr Jonathan Nainby- Luxmoore, one of the GPs at the surgery in Middleton, explained that they aim to get to patients within one hour.
A patient would speak to an operator in Bishop Auckland, who would take details.
Another medical professional would return a phone call within 20 minutes and a vehicle would be dispatched within ten minutes.
It would then take up to 45 minutes for the vehicle to reach the village.
Maxine Payne, a Middleton resident who attended the meeting, said: "I had a situation some years back when my daughter had an acute asthma attack while she was in bed and she went blue.
"It was about 11 o'clock at night so we rang the local doctor on call, Dr Austin.
"He jumped out of bed and came straight down here.
"He knew my daughter suffered from asthma, so he brought with him the thing he knew could help her.
"When he arrived my husband was giving my daughter the kiss of life.
"Dr Austin gave her an injection which basically saved her life.
"If we had had to wait for someone who didn't know my daughter, to come up here from Bishop Auckland, she wouldn't be alive today."
Concerns were also raised about the fact that the new service would mean that only three doctors would be caring for up to 170,000 people.
This is compared with the old service, when one on-call GP looked after the residents of Middleton, about 3,000 people.
Another public meeting on the issue is to be held in Middleton, at a date to be decided.
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