ANXIOUS families waiting for news about body parts being held at Bradford hospitals are being urged to be patient.

The plea comes more than two months after a hotline was set up to field calls from people who had lost loved ones. Nearly 400 distressed relatives phoned up, but have not yet received answers.

John Damman, director of corporate affairs at Bradford Hospitals NHS Trust, said he had hoped to provide information sooner but that he was constrained by national guidance.

He said: "A special group is being set up whose job is to co-ordinate what is going on nationally.

"We have been instructed not to relay information back to callers and are not in a position to be able to say whether we have got any organs or tissues.

"We have had a fairly large number of callers who say they can't sleep. They are very distressed and we have dealt with this sensitively. The hospital is

desperate to relay definite information back to parents."

The hotline was set up after a Government report revealed 200 body parts, including organs and still births, were being retained in Bradford hospitals.

The figure was disclosed as part of a nationwide audit following the organs retention scandal at Liverpool's Alder hey Hospital which saw parents holding multiple funerals for their children.

Mr Damman stressed that the

situation in Bradford was completely different from Alder Hey, but they had had to run rigorous checks.