HEALTH managers have widened the scope of controversial proposals to reduce the number of inpatient leukaemia units.

Campaigners have battled to keep the six-bed haematology unit at Darlington Memorial Hospital open since plans were announced earlier this year to merge it with a unit at Bishop Auckland General Hospital.

Health chiefs at County Durham and Darlington Acute Hospitals NHS Trust decided at a board meeting on Wednesday that the inpatient haematology services review would be extended to include the University Hospital of North Durham.

The service provides care for patients with leukaemia and other blood disorders.

Around 600 haematology patients are treated by the County Durham trust every year on an inpatient basis. Most are seen as outpatients and day cases.

The Darlington unit was opened in the 1980s following a campaign which raised nearly £300,000.

Many campaigners were friends or relatives of cancer sufferers and were indignant that they had not been consulted before plans to consider closing the unit emerged last February.

County Durham trust's medical director Bob Aitken said: "Earlier in the year, the trust began looking at the future of inpatient haematology in Darlington and Bishop Auckland Hospitals.

"It has since become clear that it would be prudent to consider this across the whole trust.

"The review will consider whether we can maintain inpatient haematology services at all three local acute hospitals - Bishop Auckland, Darlington and University Hospital of North Durham - or whether some reorganisation is necessary.

"Proposals for how to involve local service users are being developed and shared with the trust's Patient and Public Involvement Forum."

Darlington councillor Heather Scott, who chaired the fund-raising committee which raised money for the Darlington unit, said: "I just hope they come to the right decision in this wider review.

"We would still fight to retain the leukaemia in-patient services at Darlington Memorial Hospital."

"This time, I hope they would give consultation to all the people who raised money for the unit, as well as the Patient and Public Involvement Forum," she said.