THE prime location for any dispensing chemist is, naturally, next door to a doctor's surgery.

Because what do most people do when they emerge from telling their GP what ails them?

They go to the nearest pharmacy, clutching their prescription.

However, things are slightly more complicated for the patients of the brand-new Elbury Moor medical centre in the Brickfields area of Worcester.

Yes, there's a chemist next door, but anyone going through its doors for their pills or potions finds it is unable to hand out anything more potent than aspirin.

That's because Worcester healthcare chiefs have refused to give the branch of Murrays Healthcare a licence to dispense drugs.

South Worcestershire Primary Care Trust says there are already plenty of other pharmacies in the area.

Tell that to the elderly patients who, having struggled to get

to the doctor in the first place, then have to figure out how to travel to the nearest pharmacy, almost a mile away.

Murrays says it can get hold of pills by faxing prescriptions to a branch which does have a dispensing licence, and the drugs will then be delivered.

Hardly ideal, is it?

The Primary Care Trust is to be congratulated for building Elbury Moor, which has provided a much-needed boost for medical services in Worcester.

But it seems farcical that its 12,000 patients can't obtain their prescriptions from the pharmacy next door.