Health bosses have urged people to stock up today on medicines as patients hit out at pharmacy opening hours over the Easter break.

It comes as the Oxford Mail can reveal only two pharmacies across the whole of the South and Vale districts will be open for just two hours on Easter Sunday. And only a further five pharmacies will cater for the rest of the county during the day.

The chief executive of the Patients Association criticised the decision and said the NHS should be a “seven day a week, 365 days a year service”.

Pharmacies are not contractually obliged to open on Bank Holidays.

Instead NHS Oxfordshire, the county’s health authority, commissions a yearly rota for pharmacies to open near so-called out-of-hours bases, which provide emergency care to patients while GP surgeries are closed.

On Easter Sunday Henley Pharmacy will be open between 12pm and 2pm and Consult Pharmacy in Abingdon will be open between 3pm and 5pm.

In Oxford the Woodstock Road Pharmacy will be open between 9am and 7.30pm, and The Leys Pharmacy, Cowley Road between 9am and 8pm.

In Banbury, the Cross Chemist, in Horsefair, will open between 1pm and 3pm, Bicester’s Lloyds Chemist, in Sheep Street, between 2pm and 4pm and in Witney Lloyds Chemist will open between 2pm and 4pm.

Julie Dandridge, chief pharmacist at NHS Oxfordshire said people should stock up with over-the-counter medicines ready for the Easter holiday.

Katherine Murphy, chief executive of the Patients’ Association, said: “While it may be sensible to suggest pharmacies should be used rather than Accident & Emergency Departments in some cases, this won’t work if patients can’t get access to pharmacies because they are closed.”

The trust said the provision, which is based on the amount of people who have historically used the out of hours services during bank holidays, was the same on Christmas Day.

Advice about self-care and details of local health services are available at http://bit.ly/sVfNrl