RAY WHEATLAND says he has given up on life after being told his heart operation must be delayed because of health budget restraints.

Fifty-year-old Ray fears he could die before he gets the angioplasty he needs.

He has been told the operation will be delayed for a further two months on top of the usual three- to four-month wait, leaving his family in despair.

Ray is one of about 40 patients to receive letters from three top York heart surgeons this week, informing them that a lack of funds means they must wait for their operations.

Ray's wife, Carol, said: "This was his last hope. He needs this angioplasty desperately and was told so in November.

"But this further delay has made him depressed. He thinks he will die before the operation and is talking about me being OK because our children will look after me when he's gone.

"This is very distressing for us all and we feel very let down by the NHS."

Ray, of Alcuin Avenue, Tang Hall, has had heart disease for 16 years and had another massive heart attack on Bonfire Night last year.

His story emerged today after the Evening Press revealed an identical hold-up on surgery for Jean Pittman, a pensioner from Dunnington.

Dr Maurice Pye, Dr John Crook, and Dr Simon Megarry, of York Health Services NHS Trust, have written to their patients informing them of the wait and blaming North Yorkshire Health Authority for funding shortfalls.

But John Grimes, the authority's financial director, said it had had to fund a third more operations than expected.

Dr Peter Holden, of the British Medical Association Yorkshire Region, said the health authority's request for York District Hospital doctors to postpone operations to the next financial year was "absolutely outrageous".

The £5,000 operations were due to take place at Leeds General Infirmary.

Dr Holden said: "If it has been determined on clinical grounds that a patient requires an angioplasty then there is no moral excuse for delaying the procedure for financial reasons.

"The doctors are being made to manage the risk. But you either need an angioplasty or you don't, and the longer you leave it the worse it gets.

"What the health authority is asking is for people to be prepared to help them with their cash flow by waiting a bit longer. This is an accounting manoeuvre and unacceptable."

But Mr Grimes insists: "The decision about whether or not a patient undergoes an angioplasty is entirely a decision for the doctors.

"If they decide that somebody needs a procedure over the course of the next two months then they will get a procedure. That's a doctor's decision.

"The communication that I intended that the consultants at York receive was to acquaint them with the fact that we will have undertaken a third more than planned, and that if patients could wait until after the end of this financial year (March 31) then it would ease the position."

A spokeswoman for York Health trust said: "We're happy that the situation has now been clarified. We can now take things forward."

Updated: 16:13 Thursday, February 07, 2002