AT the end of the current financial year, March 1999, the St Ann's Hospital Homoeopathic Clinic in Tottenham will cease treating patients.

This will mean no more local GP referrals for new patients and all current patient treatments will be ended. There will be nothing to replace this service within the NHS. All patients wishing to continue treatment or those on the waiting lists will have to go private as the NHS refuses to continue funding for services.

I am such a patient and I know there are many more in the area who regularly benefit from complementary medicine. I have several medical conditions that conventional medical wisdom has unsuccessfully treated down the years along with the inherent side-effects that modern treatments have. I have been lucky to have a GP who initially referred me in 1996.

I can proudly say that the caring and sympathetic compassion of Dr Eames, and her patience and understanding of my own personal conditions, has gone a long way to making my life better in so many ways.

As with all success stories, the local health authority has now seen fit to close this service.

This clinic is `too expensive' and `a drain' for `proper' treatment, according to the authority.

The health authority has not notified any patient that their treatment will end.

It hopes that all the patients will go quietly into the night and crawl into a corner to die.

I demand that the health authority explains its decision to close this invaluable local service on the basis of cost. I demand a complete reversal of its decision right away. I demand that all MPs involve themselves in the right of the individual to choose suitable treatments.

I am doing what I can to keep it going. Now it is up to you to do your bit. Fight for your right to treatment and not let the faceless, mindless and hapless pen-pushers tell you what you can and cannot have.

ALAN LONG, Wakefield Street, Upper Edmonton

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000.Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.