PATIENTS in Wiltshire are in safe hands with at least 11 out-of-hours medics on duty across the county every day.

The information comes as a report by the Primary Care Foundation (PCF), an independent body, revealed that just two on call GPs were available in Suffolk - a county with ten times the population of Wiltshire.

The 60,000-strong Wiltshire population has five GPs and two nurse practitioners on call each weekday evening with three GPs and one nurse practitioner available overnight.

At weekends eight on-call GPs and two nurse practitioners are available during the day plus up to two GPs doing triage from surgery. Overnight during weekends there are three on-call doctors and one nurse practitioner.

The Primary Care Foundation report came after the inquest into the death of pensioner David Gray, of Suffolk. Mr Gray, 70, died in February 2008 after being given an overdose of diamorphine by German doctor Daniel Ubani. Dr Ubani was working his first on-call shift in this country when he administered the fatal dose.

The PCF examined 88 trusts and found that only 16 met the target of clinically assessing 90 per cent of urgent calls within 20 minutes.

A spokeswoman for Wiltshire Primary Care Trust said: “We have enough on call staff considering the rural nature of the county.

“Wiltshire is a sprawling rural area with a plain in the middle of it so having enough on call staff in important as distances between patients can be quite long.

“We don’t experience any problems with our numbers of on-call doctors in dealing with patients out of hours.”