Patients fed up with waiting for NHS hospital treatment are flooding a service which offers advice on going abroad.

Jean-Pierre Dias gets about 100 letters a day from people across England asking for information and between 25 and 30 of them are from people in Sussex.

Dr Dias, a Leeds GP, sends out information packs to patients considering travelling to Europe for treatment.

Stories about West Sussex Health Authority considering sending patients abroad as a way of cutting waiting lists are believed to have sparked the interest.

We told recently how former soldier Don Higgins, 77, from Crawley, went to Germany for a cataract operation after being told he would have to wait 12 months before being treated at Crawley Hospital.

A study by the National Audit Office also found that West Sussex had the worst record in England for keeping patients waiting a long time for treatment, with 37 per cent on the list for six months or more.

Dr Dias said: "We have had a general increase in the number of inquiries recently because of the EC ruling saying patients can travel if they are waiting too long for treatment.

"I hadn't noticed anything at first but my wife, who deals with my post, noticed we were getting so many queries from Sussex over the last few weeks.

"We started counting them up and the results were pretty surprising. We must have hundreds by now.

"I suppose the fact that Sussex is on the coast and close to Europe is also a factor."