SIR – As patients of the Link End surgery, we are very disappointed to have received a letter telling us that the surgery is likely to close.

The practice will merge into Malvern Health Centre at Prospect View. GP surgeries are fundamental to our National Health Service. So it is a worry when a well-established Malvern practice finds it difficult to recruit replacements for two GPs who have retired.

This is not just a local problem. Last summer, the Government was forced to announce that the NHS would pay private agencies £100million to recruit GPs from abroad to tackle the staffing crisis.

Two other related events happened on the same day that we heard this news. Firstly, we received a letter from a private sector company promoting an internet prescription service “to arrange my medication and have it delivered... so that

I don’t have to go to the GP or chemist”.

Such a service threatens the survival of pharmacies which rely heavily on their links with GPs in supplying prescriptions.

However at the same time, a new NHS campaign was announced urging parents to take sick children to pharmacies first rather than GPs. Useless advice if the pharmacy has just closed!

 Shortages of home grown GPs; robbing overseas countries of their GPs; threatening the future of local pharmacies – can anyone understand why this Government is making such a mess of our NHS on its watch?

Martin Willis and Sue Dalley

Malvern Link