As a parent of one of the junior doctors caught up in the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) chaos, I am grateful to your health correspondent, Helen Puttick, for bringing their plight to public attention once again.

As a parent of one of the junior doctors caught up in the Medical Training Application Service (MTAS) chaos, I am grateful to your health correspondent, Helen Puttick, for bringing their plight to public attention once again.

For the second time in three months, some of our brightest and most conscientious young people are facing potential unemployment through no fault of their own.

Extending contracts until the end of this month was a much appreciated and necessary gesture since it probably stopped many doctors either going overseas to continue their training or seeking alternative employment.

The country can ill afford to lose them.

What we need now is for our government to guarantee employment to all of the Scottish trained doctors facing unemployment, thus halting the damaging "brain drain" to other Commonwealth countries - whose taxpayers have not had to pay for their training.

In conclusion, I couldn't help but notice two interesting statistics: first in your editorial, 32,649 applicants were competing for 23,247 specialist training posts, and secondly, according to Professor Sir John Tooke, 10,000 applicants were from overseas.

As a former mathematics teacher a solution seems obvious - but as Terry Wogan might say - Is it me?

Bill Waddell, 66 Stuart Road, Bishopton.