Angry parents claim their children have faced unnecessary delays to get a vital operation.
Ten-year-old Jacob Rutherford and brother Ben, nine, were born with a rare hereditary condition which has affected their family for generations.
The pair, of Kirby Cross, have enlarged spleens, leaving them exhausted and missing days off school due to illness.
But their parents Catherine and Steve Rutherford claim the boys have been waiting for nearly a year for doctors at Colchester General Hospital to agree on how to treat them.
On Tuesday, they suffered a further setback when their long-awaited operation to remove their spleens was cancelled the day before due to a lack of nurses.
Mrs Rutherford said: "I just feel like I've been banging my head against a brick wall for the last year because nobody can make a decision."
Peter Murphy, chief executive of Essex Rivers Healthcare NHS Trust, said he apologised to the family and that their operation would be happening next week.
"The clinical decision was taken on grounds of safety following an analysis of all the operations on children that were scheduled for Tuesday.
"Jacob and Benjamin will need a high level of post-operative care from specialist paediatric nurses and, in the Trust's judgement, this would not have been adequate."
Published Friday August 13, 2004
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