URGENT measures must be taken to tackle a shortage of GPs in rural areas, Ceredigion AM Elin Jones has said, including the expansion of the number if places on medical courses in Wales.

Ms Jones, Plaid Cymru’s shadow health minister, used the last debate of the current National Assembly term to highlight what is likely to be a growing problem due to the number of GP retirements due over the next decade.

She said: “Primary care is vital to the modern, responsive health service we want to see in the future.

“It is too often neglected, and the share of the NHS budget spent on doctors’ surgeries has declined over recent years.

“There isn’t as much of a crisis in all areas, but certainly in Ceredigion and other rural areas there is very grave concern at the moment.

“We know that many are due to retire in the coming years, and there’s a lack of GPs coming through the system to work in our surgeries.

“A surgery closed in Aberaeron, and there will be more unless action is taken.”

There are currently 1,750 medical students training in Wales, which is 4.3 per cent of the UK’s medical student population, Ms Jones said.

Scotland, meanwhile, has 12.6 per cent of the UK’s trainee doctors.

Ms Jones said: “It’s now time for our medical schools to have an ambitious quota of intake from Wales. There is sufficient demand from well-qualified prospective students for places in our medical schools.

“In 2014, there were 3,700 applications for 379 places to study medicine in Cardiff and Swansea.

“All evidence seems to demonstrate that if you recruit your medical students from the catchment of your medical school, then they are far more likely to remain working in the health service in those nations.”