A man who had to travel to Leeds to get a prescription for his elderly mother is calling for a 24-hour pharmacy for Bradford.

Michael McGann's 89-year-old mother needed an urgent prescription on a Sunday evening at 7pm - but the only suggestion the emergency doctor could give was for the family to pay for a taxi driver to take the prescription to Leeds, get the medicines and bring them back.

Mr McGann's mother Marion was suffering from a chest infection and was dehydrated. Sadly, she died earlier this month.

He was horrified to find there was no chemist in Bradford open after 5pm that Sunday.

He said: "We live in what's supposed to be a 24-hour city. You can drink, eat and dance all night but if you're ill, you can't get medicine. It seems totally unacceptable."

The doctor who gave the prescription was from the Healthcall out-of-hours service.

Doctors in Bradford can contact a pharmacist who can be paged to go and dispense a prescription in the city. Healthcall itself runs the duty pharmacy service for Bradford Health Authority.

Roger Gardner, manager of Healthcall, said records showed the duty pharmacist had been called only once during June. That had been for a prescription for oxygen.

He added there were strict criteria for issuing urgent prescriptions and although he appreciated families would want to get the medicines as soon as they could, medically they were not classed as urgent.

He said: "All our doctors carry basic antibiotics and analgesics so they can start medication that needs to be started straight away."

He added he believed all Healthcall doctors knew of the out-of-hours pharmacy service but he would highlight the issue.

Mr McGann, of Clayton, said it was appalling the out-of-hours pharmacy service had only been called once in a month, which he said indicated people were travelling miles to get prescriptions elsewhere.

When he went to Leeds for the prescription, he had met another man from Clayton who had driven to get medicines for his children.

He said: "People are having such trouble to get a chemist out that I'm not surprised that the accident and emergency department in Bradford is overrun, because at least they will get medication there."

A spokesman for Bradford Health Authority said discussions were taking place to ensure night doctors were aware of the out-of-hours service and to find out what happened in Mrs McGann's case.

Mr McGann hopes to increase the pressure for a 24-hour pharmacy and urged anyone who had had a problem getting a prescription dispensed at night to contact their MP or to send the details to him at 6 Broomcroft, Clayton, Bradford BD14 6NW.