The NHS Direct Wales online enquiry service is now available in Welsh, on the NHS Direct Wales website at www. nhsdirect. wales. nhs. uk.

Questions can now be asked on a vast range of general health related topics, such as, chickenpox, local NHS services, patient’s rights and healthy living.

All enquiries are answered via e-mail by Skilled Health Information Specialists, using high quality information in Welsh or English, as the stipulated by the enquirer.

NHS Direct Wales and the Welsh Ambulance Services NHS Trust are committed to providing a bilingual service and the Welsh online enquiry service is the latest development for the bilingual NHS Direct Wales website.

Elsewhere, new nurses’ uniforms introduced by the region’s NHS trust have left a number of wearers with rashes.

The new all-Wales uniforms were introduced to make it easier for patients to identify different grades of nurses.

Betsi Cadwaladr University Health Board, the group covering GPs, primary care services, hospitals, mental health and community care across the region, distributed the uniforms to 5,000 nurses, of which a 150 have been complaining of skin irritation.

Wales is the first nation across the UK to introduce a national uniform.