WHEN The Northern Echo launched its Chance To Live campaign, we knew its aims were long term.

Realistically, we could not expect years of under-funding and neglect to be put right in a matter of months.

Steadily, and surely, the level of treatment for patients needing heart surgery is improving. We still have some way to go before we match standards elsewhere in Europe, but we are heading in the right direction.

We welcome the Health Secretary's commitment yesterday to cut the maximum waiting time for surgery from 15 months to 12 months from next March. If that promise is fulfilled, it should mean that average waiting times are considerably less than a year.

That represents a substantial improvement on the situation when our campaign was launched 30 months ago.

There has been criticism of Mr Milburn's use of National Lottery money and private hospital services to reduce waiting times.

While, in an ideal world, we should not have to rely on Lottery money to help fund our health service, we must come to terms with the reality we face. The reality is we need to improve services, and we need to find the money to improve them.

Surely, it is more worthwhile to use Lottery money to save lives than, for example, build a loss-making dome which opened for just 12 months, or build a national stadium that we can do without.

The aversion to the use of private hospitals for NHS treatment is based on out-dated and misplaced dogma.

The founding principle of the NHS was that medical treatment is available to all, free at the point of delivery.

That principle is not compromised by the fact that treatment is given by private sector staff in privately-funded hospitals.

It should not matter how Mr Milburn is providing improvements, but that the improvements are being provided.

It should not matter that patients waiting for heart surgery are being treated in private hospitals.

What should matter is that patients are being treated more quickly than they were 30 months ago. Anachronistic political dogma must never be allowed to stand in the way of saving lives