SHOCK is bound to be the initial reaction to the disclosure in the NHS performance tables today that patients admitted to hospital in East Lancashire are more likely than most to die within a month of treatment.

But serious and alarming as this situation is -- and a cause for every effort for improvement -- it does, of course, need tempering with realisation that the figures are not so much a measure of bad treatment, but of hospitals fighting an uphill battle with patients whose chances of survival are poorer than most to begin with.

For complex as are the torrent of statistics in the second annual performance indicators, in simple terms they are a better measure of where bad health is to be found than of where the poorly performing hospitals are. And it will come as no shock that the worst health is found where there is least wealth -- so that people here in the North West are 50 per cent more likely to die young than those in the Home Counties, particularly from heart disease and cancer.

But if poorer social and economic conditions in East Lancashire encourage harmful lifestyle factors, such as bad housing, poor diet and smoking, it is evident that much if not more improvement is needed at primary care level. A drive to encourage people to visit their doctors sooner and have more frequent check-ups would be a start.

Yet even this is hindered by the fact that the area has 10 per cent fewer GPs than the national average -- and, as a study showed two years ago, a potential crisis in its failure to attract young recruits. All of this demands better and greater targeting of NHS resources and recruitment incentives at health blackspots like East Lancashire -- which has twice been refused Health Action Zone status. And in the government's imminent, pre-election gush of aid and strategies for the health service, it is vital that our region is among the winners. Meantime, our health authority, trusts and primary care groups must strive all-out to climb up the performance tables.