As radical changes to the National Health Service are announced, Health Secretary Alan Milburn explains how these proposals will affect people in the North-East and how they come close to answering The Northern Echo's longstanding A Chance To Live Campaign.

THERE'LL be two types of readers of The Northern Echo with direct experience of our health service. Those who have been left waiting for hours in casualty or for months in pain and fear for an operation. And those with every reason to thank the NHS - and may well owe their lives to the skill and dedication of its doctors and nurses.

I suspect, for all its problems, the number of people with a good experience of the NHS in the North-East far outnumbers those with bad ones. But I also know there are far too many people here who rightly believe the NHS has let them down. So the challenge now is to bring the standard of care and service in the NHS everywhere up to the standard of the best.

I don't for a minute believe it will be easy. But I tell you why it's not impossible as some of the NHS's critics suggest. For somewhere in our health service, you can be sure that doctors, nurses and NHS staff are already meeting the standards you and I want.

There are 17,000 more nurses and 7,000 more doctors working in the NHS than in 1997 - with around 200 extra nurses being taken on in Newcastle over the last year alone. Under the NHS Plan, many more are on the way. Across the country, there are 68 new hospitals either opened already or being built, 260 casualty departments being modernised with 700,000 more operations a year than in 1997.

The NHS plans for improving the treatment of cancer and coronary heart disease are so well regarded internationally that they have been translated and adopted wholesale by Spain. So there is still plenty to be proud of in our NHS - not least the expertise, commitment and compassion of its staff - and plenty of progress too.

But it's no good if you are waiting, as thousands do, months for an operation or it's cancelled at the last minute because of shortage of staff or lack of beds. No good either, if the treatment or service you get isn't up to standard.

We all know that the quality of care and treatment in many areas falls below those of our European counterparts. Putting that right needs investment to tackle the chronic under-funding of the NHS for decades - and reform to ensure the money the taxpayer is putting in delivers the improvements we want. That investment is now going in. NHS funding is rising under this Government at over six per cent a year in real terms.

It meant I could announce yesterday increases above inflation averaging 7.15 per cent for health authorities in the North-East next year - over £150m, in real terms, more to spend on the health needs of The Northern Echo's readers.

And we have launched a debate to see how we can keep increasing the amount of NHS funding in the decades to come. But as we commit these extra resources, we are also committed to major reforms. Under the NHS plan, we are laying down national standards across the country and intervening to ensure hospitals and health authorities meet them. We are devolving power and budgets down to front-line staff, ending out-dated barriers so nurses have a bigger role and giving patients more choice.

If that means making use of private providers for NHS operations where they offer high quality, good value for money and can cut backlogs, then we will do that too. We are not interested in the old ideological divides - and particularly where they stop us cutting delays and improving the treatment and service within our National Health Service. NHS patients want and deserve prompt and good quality care and we are making the changes to ensure they get it.

That is why yesterday I also announced radical proposals under which every patient needing hospital treatment will be helped by their GP to choose not just the date of their operation but the location as well. We will start with those who have been waiting the longest for the most serious conditions. This means that from next summer, every patient in the North-East who has been waiting for a heart operation for six months or more will be offered a shorter wait at another hospital. Many may choose not to and prefer to wait at their local hospital. Those who want to travel to get faster treatment elsewhere will get help with the extra costs.

But for the first time in the history of the NHS, patients will be given a real choice over where and when they are treated. We are determined to create a health service in which the needs of individual patients come first.