Scotland's Health Minister Susan Deacon has told MSPs that the country's National Health Service is coping "exceptionally" well with the flu outbreak.

Although she recognised that admissions in some hospitals were up by 50%, the NHS was not facing a crisis and was not in chaos.

In a statement to the parliament on Wednesday she said: "Words like crisis, chaos and shambles should not be used to describe the NHS in Scotland - that is a language I do not know and do not understand.

"There has been exceptional pressure which has been met with exceptional effort.

"I stress that this is a situation to be managed not a crisis to be manufactured."

But she conceded: "We can always improve, we can always get better, we can always learn from experiences."

Ms Deacon said experts are predicting that the flu outbreak is likely to peak next week, but she believes the problems will not go away quickly.

However, opposition MSPs rounded on the minister and accused her of putting a gloss over the very real crisis in the NHS.

The Scottish National Party's Kay Ullrich said: "Make shift wards, nursing staff doing back-to-back shifts, the cancellation of non-emergency operations - is that coping?

"That is what I call crisis management."

She went on to question why there had not been a nation-wide campaign to encourage the take-up of the flu vaccination.

But Ms Deacon said the targeting of key groups including the elderly had been done adequately and flu vaccinations - costing £2m - have been available to GP practices since the autumn.

Thanks for health service staff

She commended NHS staff, local authorities for its efforts in providing residential care to the elderly and the public themselves who had taken advice and stayed at home.

Latest figures show that the country as a whole is not yet in the grip of an epidemic which is declared when there are 1,000 cases of infection per 100,000 people in Scotland.

The British Medical Association said earlier in the week it was unhappy with the Ms Deacon's continuing insistence that there is no winter crisis north of the border.

The organisation questioned her handling over the flu vaccination programme for the elderly.