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A mother of three young children has lashed out at local doctor services and says she will take her sick child straight to a hospital casualty department in the future.

Helen Gare claims she received 'appalling' service from local health service providers when her two year old son Samuel had a nasty attack of croup.

She was particularly concerned to be told by the Suffolk Doctors on Call (SDOC) service that there was no doctor based in Haverhill and that she would have to travel to Newmarket to see one.

Samuel, of Cloverfield, Haverhill, had an early morning coughing attack which his mother believed was croup. She spoke to a doctor in Newmarket who offered to examine him there, but said it was not necessary to take him to hospital.

Mrs Gare took Samuel to Christmas Maltings Surgery the next day, where he was given antibiotics and paracetamol for an ear infection and croup. Later when Mrs Gare woke Samuel to go and collect her four year old son Jamie from nursery, his condition was worse. She put him and his baby brother Harry, seven months, into the car and drove back to the surgery where she waited 15 minutes before leaving without seeing a doctor.

"When I got home I called NHS Direct and they called an ambulance immediately."she said

"By this time Samuel was on the sofa barely conscious. The ambulance arrived and put him on air with some asthma medicine in it to try to open up his airways and when he got to hospital they gave him a steroid. I have been advised that should Samuel have croup again with any change in his breathing to take him to hospital immediately.

Basically it seems if your child is sick and you are worried about them, take them to Addenbrookes A&E as there will be no doctors within Haverhill in the early hours of the morning who will look at your child."

A spokesman for West Suffolk Primary Care Trust said, "We are extremely sorry to hear of Helen Gares experience.

In this situation we would advise her to contact the providers of the two services used - Christmas Maltings Surgery and SDOC.

If Ms Gare is not fully happy with the response she receives to her complaint, then, as commissioner of GP Services and the out of hours service, the PCT will then also look into her complaint. In the meantime our patient advice and liasion service will be contacting Ms Gare to see if they can help her in any way with the complaints process.

We would like to reassure people that there is a Haverhill SDOC base - Haverhill Health Centre in Camps Road - and NHS Direct is aware of this."

A SDOC Spokesman said that the appropriate advice had been given and that a doctor could have been seen at Newmarket Hospital.

Home visits were only made where a patient was bed-bound or it was medically necessary.

It has been the case for quite some time that there was no doctor based in Haverhill who could be visited at night and this was not due to recent changes to the service.