SOMETHING “radical” will be needed to clear a huge backlog of waiting patients when treatments properly resume in North Wales, a health chief has said. Geoff Ryall-Harvey, chief officer at the North Wales Community Health Council, said the situation has grown so challenging it is now “beyond the power of any individual health board to recover in any reasonable time.” The two categories of concern are those who are waiting up to 52 weeks for treatment, and those waiting up to 36 weeks. Mr Ryall-Harvey said as of November, both categories saw about ten times the average number of people - with about 35,000 or more waiting 52 weeks and around 52,000 waiting 36.