The emergency helpline set up to deal with public enquiries about the hundreds of body parts stored by Basildon and Thurrock General Hospitals NHS Trust has received around 200 calls from concerned patients and relatives.

Health chiefs set up the helpline in the wake of the shock revelations at Bristol Royal Infirmary and Alder Hey Hospital and a national census of organs and tissues stored by pathology services.

A Trust spokeswoman said: "We have taken about 200 calls and most of these were within the first few days of setting up the helpline.

"We will be following up all these calls and ensuring all callers get the information they want."

The survey of the nation's hospitals revealed last week that they were storing more than 100,000 body parts and foetuses.

Basildon and Thurrock General Hospitals NHS Trust has confirmed it had 682 in its possession, but has stressed that almost three quarters are within a museum collection.

The museum collection is largely made up of body parts and organs collected 30 to 40 years ago and is used exclusively for teaching purposes.

Of the remaining specimens, over half were removed during surgical procedures at the hospital and were retained with the patients' consent.

The remainder includes organs removed after postmortem examinations to determine the cause of death.

The Trust said no organs were believed to have been illegally retained without any form of consent.

The Trust spokeswoman said: "In common with every other trust in the country we will have to follow the new guidelines which have been issued and will have to complete a comprehensive cataloguing exercise - which will be audited.

"Despite the age of our museum collection we will go back as far as we can."

The Government's chief medical officer, Professor Liam Donaldson, has said that consent forms and guidelines on organ retention had been too ambiguous in the past.

The Trust has already completely overhauled its practices over the last year and introduced new clearer post mortem consent forms which meet the latest Government guidelines.

It is also to review the retention of the museum collection.

The spokeswoman said: "The Trust has changed its practices and we now have complete confidence in our procedures.

"We would like to state clearly our regret for any distress that the current situation is causing people."

The helpline for patients or relatives to call is 01268 598190.

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