A NEW mobile unit to treat Hampshire cataract patients should ensure none have to wait more than three months for surgery.

This is the pledge from health chiefs after it was announced Hampshire and the Isle of Wight would be visited by a new mobile treatment centre designed to help cut waiting lists.

The Department of Health announced yesterday Netcare, a private South African company, had won the lucrative contract to treat cataract patients in mobile units.

It is expected the fast-track surgery centre will visit Hampshire later this year.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Strategic Health Authority, which serves a population of 1.8m, is understood to have been selected because it has some of the longest waiting times for cataract operations in England.

In a statement issued today, the authority said: "All strategic health authorities are working towards reducing the length of time that people need to wait for cataract operations.

"By increasing capacity, both from within the NHS and the private sector - for example private hospitals and new providers such as Netcare - we are able to offer greater choice to patients as well as shorter waiting times.

"Within Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, it is our aim that no one will need to wait more than three months for their cataract operation by October 2004."

The new units will also visit Dorset, Somerset, Surrey, Sussex, Kent, Thames Valley, Cheshire, Merseyside, Cumbria, Lancashire, Northumber-land, Tyne and Wear and other areas.

Health Secretary John Reid has stressed the contracts will ensure the new centres make provision to train doctors rather than poaching NHS staff.

The scheme is part of controversial plans to provide fast-track surgery centres for simple procedures in order to reduce NHS waiting times.

Ministers have promised that by the end of 2005 there will be a total of 80 such centres, providing cataract, hip and knee surgery for some 250,000 NHS patients a year.