WE need to know we are in the best possible hands when we go into hospital. The last thing a sick patient wants to worry about is a doctor making a mistake, or the risk of picking up a nasty infection.

So it is excellent news that York Hospital has won funding to improve safety yet further.

The hospital has already been making real strides in hygiene - the steady fall in the incidence of the so-called superbug' MRSA is proof of that.

The £165,000 of funding from the Safer Patients Initiative will be spent investigating how the hospital's wards and operating theatres can be made still safer. Good.

Initiatives such as this, however, should not be allowed to disguise the real crisis in health care that this country faces.

This latest money - from a scheme run by independent charity The Health Foundation - is a tiny drop in the ocean when compared to the huge NHS debt.

The financial problems of the local primary care trust (PCT) are well-documented. The Selby and York PCT ended last financial year nearly £24 million in debt - and the problems are unlikely to be completely solved by savings resulting from the merger of trusts to form the new, larger North Yorkshire and York PCT.

The budget problems have led to real cuts in the quality of health care in our area - with some non-urgent operations being blocked, and 60 beds being cut at York Hospital.

Nationwide, health care unions have repeatedly warned that the scale of job losses in the NHS could rise to about 20,000.

Despite the NHS's problems, health care staff in York and North Yorkshire - both in hospitals and GP surgeries - continue to work wonders.

But eye-catching schemes such as the Safer Patient Initiative, are no substitute for real Government action to sort the health service out.