A SPECIALIST weight-loss clinic which helps ease symptoms for diabetes patients is to close.

The Lipotrim clinic at Salford Royal Hospital - known as Hope Hospital - provides a prescription diet and support programme for people with weight-related conditions who are referred there by doctors.

But the doctor who runs the programme has retired - and hospital bosses are not keeping it going.

The Lipotrim formula, which forms the basis to the radical diet, will be available at pharmacies, but patients say the closure of the clinic will be a massive loss for people who have come to rely on it and those who could have been helped in the future.

Father and son Stan and Chris Kennedy, from Radcliffe, attend each week and have lost a combined 12 and a half stone.

Stan, 55, a bingo manager, started a 36-week course in March as an alternative to daily insulin jabs against his type 2 diabetes which is closely linked with obesity.

Drastic

He said: "I wanted to avoid injections like the plague and my doctor recommended that massive weight loss would help me. I have lost the best part of seven stone, but it's very drastic and the support of nurses and other patients is a big help.

"There are people who are very despondent about continuing without that. It's a wonderful programme and it's a shame that it's not going to be there to help people in the future."

Salford Royal says people who have already enrolled will be able to complete their course.

Non-medical referrals could also use the programme and while the hospital offers the formula at a reduced rate, patients will now have to pay full price for it over the counter.

Chris, 21, who lost five and a half stone in three months, said: "It's the support that all the dieters give each other which will be the big loss - that's what keeps you going."

A spokesman for Salford Royal said new weight-loss patients will be able to be treated through a weight management programme run by Salford Primary Care Trust.

A trust spokesman said: "We are already run a community weight-management service, but there will not be anything specifically for people on the Lipotrim diet."