This is a national issue which affects local people in Scunthorpe, so I feel that alone justifies its inclusion on the VisitScunthorpe.Com web site. As Scunthorpe is a mainly working class area, it does have a larger number of people with higher health dependencies than on average. We are fortunate in so much as there is a new drop in medical facility being built in the town to help provide care as and when needed. Having said that, the scrapping of NHS Direct and its proposed replacement using none medical staff will in my opinion see an increase in the demand for appointments with the GP services in Scunthorpe, and a downturn in healthcare available to the community generally. The direct result of this will be two fold: 1 - The use of less qualified staff will result in less accuracy in diagnosis provided to users of the service. Obviously in some cases this may further endanger health and / or life 2 - Increase in the amount of time it takes you to see a doctor, possibly resulting in a lack of availability of waiting times, appointments or longer waits in A&E and drop in centres. What can we do about this? We can register our objection to this proposal by signing this on line "Save NHS Direct" petition which has been organised by former Hull MP John Prescott. David Cameron has been reported saying that if John's petition gets 100,000 signatures then he will guarantee a Commons Debate on the matter. I having read several reports in the media about this, I think that its imperative that the NHS Direct service remains. When questioned about this plan, the health secretary said that currently the NHS Direct service costs �123 Million a year to run, but was unable to estimate either the cost of its replacement, or its estimated savings. The thing that really concerns me is that prior to the election we were told that the NHS would be ring fenced, and indeed one of the most famous images of the 2010 campaign featured David Cameron with the slogan "We can't go on like this. I'll cut the deficit, not the NHS." In addition to signing the petition I'd urge you to 'like' the facebook page created for this to receive updates and to also better understand the impact that the removal of this service will have on you directly. So go on, take a second to sign the petition, lets see if through the power of petition we can convince Mr Cameron to stand by his word and have a debate in the house on the matter. You can also tell your friends about this campaign by sending them links to either this article or any of the above sites on either twitter, facebook or even by "old fashioned" email!