Sirs,

In their recent paper, Jean Adams and Martin White1 make the observation that electoral wards in north-east England with low aggregate measures of education, employment or income gener-ally have shorter straight-line distances to a general practice. They conclude that ‘more deprived areas tend to be better served by health services in terms of geographical proximity to general practices ’ (p. 81). However, consideration of alternative measures of the availability of primary care does not support the view that deprived areas are better served by primary-care services. First, Adams and White’s analysis lacks a population denom-inator. This may be significant, since it is well documented that deprived areas in England generally have fewer general practi-tioners (GPs) per 10 000 population.2 It has been suggested that this relative lack of access to primary care may contribute to worse health outcomes in deprived populations.3 The availabilit