PLANS are being put into action to more than half the number of patients waiting longer than 36 weeks for treatment in Gwent by the end of next March.

As yet unpublished figures for the end of last month indicate that, unlike recent years, waits of longer than 36 weeks have been further reduced in the first month of a financial year.

The norm in April has been to see figures rise again after a concerted effort by health boards with the aid of additional Welsh Government funding to reduce them in the final quarter of a financial year.

The latter happened from January-March this year, with an end-of-December high of more than 4,000 waits of longer than 36 weeks being cut by more than 30 per cent by March 31.

But a further, albeit much smaller reduction is expected for the end of April, when the figure will be fewer than 2,500, and Aneurin Bevan University Health Board hopes to keep whittling this down.

By the end of June, the aim is to have reduced the number of treatment waits of longer than 36 weeks to fewer than 2,300.

And by March 31 next year, the end of the 2016/17 financial year, the target is to get below 1,200, with orthopaedics shouldering the whole of this long waits burden.

That will mean clearing the ophthalmology waiting list of waits of more than 36 weeks - it currently stands at around 900 - and the lists of several other specialties with smaller amounts of such waits, including general surgery, ENT (ear,nose and throat), and gynaecology.

Within these plans is one to drive down waits of more than a year for treatment, which are largely confined to patients whose cases are complex, for instance due to there being other health problems to manage in addition to that which is the subject of the wait for treatment.

The number of patients who have waited more than a year for treatment is expected to have dipped below 500 at the end of April, for the first time in many months.