HEALTH workers are protesting over plans to close accident and emergency services at Bishop Auckland General Hospital. They are lobbying the Durham and Darlington Primary Care Trust (PCT) board today in protest at the proposals.

Hospital officials in New Zealand are struggling with a crush of patients considered unusual during the Southern Hemisphere's summer. Four public hospitals in Auckland report seeing the same number of patients they normally see in mid-winter when the cold-and-flu season boosts the ranks of the sick.

Palmerston North Hospital will take extra precautions to screen any patients transferred from Auckland Hospital for the vancomycin- resistant enterococci (VRE) superbug. Auckland Hospital has identified that the bug caused the death of two of 33 patients that tested positive for it.

A 71-year-old tramper rescued in the Broken Hills-Puketui Valley- Hikuai area of the Coromandel peninsula after falling 10m-20m into the stream 24 hours earlier is in a stable condition in hospital.

By BOLAND MARY JANE 'The money we spend on these people is money we cannot spend on New Zealanders' - health boss Dwayne Crombie A PACIFIC Island overstayer will not pay a cent towards a half-million dollar hospital bill after the government granted her permanent residency.