Kinloch Rannoch - the village where an emergency ambulance is an hour away

IN THE small picturesque Perthshire village of Kinloch Rannoch, residents hope the Scottish Parliament report will give their campaign a vital shot in the arm.

SOS Rannoch has been fighting for an out-of-hours service since a local GP retired in 2006. The nearest cover is 20 miles away down a single-track road.

Last month a 56-year-old man died from a heart attack at the Macdonald Loch Rannoch Hotel. It was a Saturday so the GP surgery was closed and the ambulance took an hour to reach him.

Dick Barbor-Might, 73, a member of SOS Rannoch, said: "

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If we'd had an out-of-hours GP with a defibrillator, maybe the man could have been saved."

NHS Tayside says it would cost between 150,000 and 557,000 to have an out-of-hours surgery in the village.

Even at 150,000, with just 600 villagers, the service would be 50 times as expensive as in an urban area.

Dr Jean Turner, executive director of the Scotland Patients Association, accused NHS Tayside of accepting "third world" standards of care for Kinloch Rannoch in a letter to health secretary Nicola Sturgeon.

Professor Tony Wells, chief executive of NHS Tayside, said:

"We are looking carefully at the committee's conclusions."

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