Charity to provide medical care in East End

A French medical charity which usually works in war ones is setting up in London to prop up overstretched services.

Paris-based Medecins du Monde, which sends doctors to some of the poorest countries in the world, believes there are thousands of people in London not receiving adequate medical care.

In a move that will be deeply embarrassing for the Government, the charity will dispatch doctors to the East End.

Working alongside NHS doctors and nurses, its staff will be based at three new medical centres and will give their time free to help the needy and vulnerable.

There is a chronic shortage of GPs in Britain with London's deprived boroughs suffering most acutely.

French and German GPs are already coming to work in London to plug gaps as vacancy rates are running at up to 10 per cent.

The British Medical Association-said last year the vacancy rate among GPs in the capital effectively meant there were more than half a million Londoners without a family doctor.

The initiative, called Project: London, will be launched in Tower Hamle t s, where patients have the most difficulty getting on a GP's list.

Tower Hamlets and Newham are suffering soaring rates of tuberculosis and the capital has about 3,000 new cases a year.

An Evening Standard investigation found that in one year 12,000 people had such a problem finding a GP they were allocated one by the health authority.

M餥cins du Monde said the first group of doctors and nurses had been trained to operate in the clinics, scheduled to open in July or August.

The Healthcare Commission has already given its preliminary approval to the clinics and is due to make a final inspection in the next two months.

The clinics will provide basic health care to the homeless, refugees, asylum seekers and prostitutes.

British charities have welcomed the move as providing a much needed boost to the capital's over-stretched health services.

Tarig Hilal, of homelessness charity Crisis, said the lives of those on the streets or in overcrowded bed and breakfast accommodation meant it was inevitable that many would experience poor health.

A spokeswoman for the Refugee Council said: "We know of people who have been turned away from GP surgeries-because receptionists have thought they were not eligible for treatment. In other cases GP lists are full and they are simply unable to register.

"Many refugees don't know how the NHS works and don't understand how to register with a doctor or where to go."

But health officials are less certain about the project, saying they were already helping M餥cins du Monde's target population.

Carolyn Regan, chief executive of the North East London Strategic Health Authority, said: "One of the central things we already do, we feel very successfully, is to invest a lot of effort and time into providing health services for precisely these groups."

Karen McColl, director of M餥cins du Monde UK, said it had been assessing heath care in east London for two years.

"Providing health care to marginalised people in developed countries, as well as developing ones, is an integral part of the humanitarian work of the 25- year- old M餥cins du Monde network," she told The Times.