CAMPAIGNS to save services at local hospitals could cost 1,000 unnecessary deaths a year, it has been claimed.

Patients suffering heart attacks or severe injuries are more likely to survive if the ambulance takes them to a specialist centre, rather than their general hospital, says the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR).

The IPPR argues that the expensive and complex treatments and highly-trained staff needed to deal with these emergencies would be better concentrated at regional centres, rather than spread more thinly around local facilities.

A battle is ongoing between campaign groups in Hartlepool and Stockton over plans to close a women and children's centre at North Tees hospital and transfer it to Hartlepool hospital.

Elsewhere, campaigners in east Cleveland lost a battle to keep Guisborough Maternity Hospital open, and a group called Save Our Hospital was formed to defend services at Bishop Auckland General Hospital, County Durham.

But in a report to be published later this month, the IPPR will argue that campaigners could be holding back the process of change towards a system that would save more lives.

Drawing on research published in The Lancet, the IPPR calculates that 500 lives could be saved a year if all heart attack victims received the latest angioplasty treatment - where tiny balloons are inserted in the bloodstream - rather than the clot-busting drugs used in most general hospitals.

Patients also have a three-hour window of opportunity for angioplasty to be performed, compared with the one-hour target for clot-busting drugs - allowing ambulances to travel further to hospital.

The IPPR also quotes estimates from the Royal College of Surgeons and British Orthopaedic Association that 770 lives could be saved each year by access to specialist trauma centres.

IPPR associate director Richard Brooks said: "On the strength of the evidence, people should be out on the streets campaigning for changes to NHS services to protect the health of their families, not to keep services the way they are."

A spokesman for the Bishop Auckland Save Our Hospital campaign said: "We wouldn't disagree that centres of excellence - containing the best consultants - will be required.

"However, it does depend on where the centre is, and we would question the efficacy of transporting somebody by ambulance - from up in the Durham Dales, for example - for one-and-a-half hours."

Stockton borough councillor Ann Cains said there was a difference between accepting expert advice and something that went against common sense.