ELDERLY patients are being asked to pay two-thirds of a week's state pension for transport to hospital appointments - leaving them just £33.75 a week to live on.
People living in Kintyre are asked for £80 if they need to go to Glasgow and £60 to travel to Lorn and Islands Hospital in Oban, although the state pension is only £113.75.
The charges are being applied when a patient has been assessed, via a telephone booking system as not qualifying for NHS transport.
With no public transport available to take people to the hospitals and back the same day, patients with no other means of travel are told to use Red Cross transport.
Although all but £10 of the fee can be claimed back a month later, patients have to pay the Red Cross driver on the day.
The NHS Highland arrangement has been labelled "bureaucracy gone mad", and a campaign has begun to end the situation which is denying pensioners money for food and bills.
Argyll Liberal Democrat MP Alan Reid said: "There needs to be a review of the whole system and questions asked as to why the NHS is forcing elderly patients to travel these very long distances."
Campbeltown councillor Donald Kelly said: "It's a scandal. It's totally unacceptable to be charging people that amount in this day and age, where a lot of elderly people will be living on the breadline. This could put them into dire straits. It needs to be looked at as soon as possible."
Steve Byrne of Campbeltown Community Council said: "The whole thing is wrong. Somebody from Carradale was told they had to pay £80 up-front for transport to a hospital in Glasgow. It's two-thirds of a weekly pension."
Sarah Borthwick, 81, of Stewarton, near Campbeltown, has had to make a five-hour return trip every three weeks for the last six months to collect chemotherapy tablets.
Mrs Borthwick said: "I don't think people can believe it, that I have to go all the way up to Oban just to get tablets but I do.
"I go up there to get two packets of tablets. You have your weight taken and your blood pressure taken, but that's it."
Mrs Borthwick added: "I phoned to book the transport one day and they said, 'You don't qualify for this transport any more but I will give you another number if you need a lift.' I phoned my cancer nurse and she said it was ridiculous.
"She phoned and sorted it, but they told her the other transport was the Red Cross where you have to pay £60 and then claim the money back."
Iain McNicoll, a retired GP in Port Appin in Argyll with a life-long interest in rural medicine, said: "I think this is bureaucracy gone mad."
He added weight and blood pressure could be taken locally and he saw no reason why the chemotherapy tablets could not be transported from Oban for patients to collect them from a doctor in Campbeltown.
Kintyre resident Val CannelI said she intervened for one local woman who was wrongly told she had to pay £80 for Red Cross travel to hospital in Glasgow, when she actually qualified for NHS transport.
An NHS Highland spokesman said: "With regard to transport costs, we are aware that the situation is not ideal and we are currently looking into this issue to see if we can find a solution."
He said cancer patients had to go to Oban for a regular assessment of their condition - not just a standard health check - in a place where specialist health professionals were based.
Blood samples may be needed and there were checks for any adverse reactions to the chemotherapy drugs.
He said: "The dose of the drug may also need to be changed as a consequence of the assessment that it carried out."
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