A RADCLIFFE GP has warned of an impending crisis in the NHS if politicians continue to dismiss the concerns of family doctors.

Dr Kumar Kotegaonkar, the chairman of the local GP's committee, issued the alert following a recent national ballot in which practitioners voted overwhelming to terminate their NHS contracts unless there was an improvement in their working conditions.

He said morale among the borough's GPs was at an all time low.

Local GPs refused to take part in last month's national strike organised by the British Medical Council to highlight the increasing burden placed on family doctors. But they did sign a petition supporting the aims and objectives of the day-long protest. Dr Kotegaonkar, who has a practice in Radcliffe, told the Bury Times: "We did not want to hold the patients to ransom and put them to any inconvenience.

"But the Labour Government has to take seriously the result of the ballot in which local doctors, as well as our colleagues across the country, voted overwhelming to leave the NHS if improvements are not made."

The doctor, who is also a director of BARDOC, the practitioners' out-of-hours-service, said that morale in the profession was "extremely low".

His comments come only months after a number of Bury's top hospital consultants apologised for "failing their patients". They blamed a lack of funding in the health service and accused Bury's two Labour politicians of doing little to help to resolve the situation, a claim angrily denied by both David Chaytor and Ivan Lewis.

Dr Kotegaonkar called for increased investment in the health service to relieve the pressure in the primary care services.

"Money is coming into the health service, but more is needed to make up for a 20-year lack of investment especially as more demands are being placed on the profession," said the doctor.

He called for more manpower to take pressure off already stretched GPs and moves to ease the burden of paperwork.

"We want the Government to work with us for the benefit of patients and help tackle the health problems in Bury which, for example, has a high incidence of heart disease," concluded Dr Koteganokar, who has been practising as a GP for the past 20 years.