7:30pm Wednesday 16th December 2009
By Allan Tunningley
A SOUTH Lakeland hospital has received a double boost in its bid to become a specialist centre for cancer treatment.
Patients will be able to undergo chemo-therapy for the first time at Westmorland General Hospital next year, thanks to a £187,000 grant from Macmillan Cancer Support.
And in two years’ time, radiotherapy could be offered after the hospital cleared a major hurdle towards getting a £12m radio-therapy unit.
The two announcements, made today, will almost certainly secure the hospital’s future.
The hospital has under-gone a troubled two years of ward closures and seen the transfer of some key medical services to the Royal Lancaster Infir-mary.
Providing both chemo-therapy and radiotherapy will cut patient travel times to other centres for treatment. The nearest chemotherapy is currently offered at the RLI or Furness General Hospital, Barrow, while the closest radiotherapy treatment is 44 miles away at Preston.
Officially, WGH is being called the ‘preferred’ site for the state-of-the-art radiotherapy unit. The final decision will only be made after a detailed business plan has been drawn up by the Uni-versity Hospitals of More-cambe Bay NHS Trust.
If this supports it, up to two linear accelerators (LINACS) – the devices used for radiation trea-tments – will be built at the hospital ready to begin operating in 2012.
Once operational, they could provide 4,500 treat-ments a year for 150 cancer patients.
The chemotherapy unit, which is being funded for two years by Macmillan Cancer Support, will treat 150 patients a month.
Trust chief executive Tony Halsall admitted the NHS was only likely to pay for one of the LINACS with the second funded from a public campaign.
Currently many patients have to travel for up to 90 minutes for radiotherapy treatment – double the nationally recommended travel time.
The decision to choose Kendal as the favoured site for the service follows months of work by a specialist team of health commissioners from Cum-bria and Lancashire, who have been exploring the options for a new service in the Morecambe Bay area.
University Hospitals of Morecambe Bay NHS Trust (UHMBT) has been invited to start work on a detailed business case for the new service which could be open to patients in 2012.
Dr Hugh Reeve, NHS Cumbria's lead GP in South Lakeland, said: “This is great news. The distances patients have to travel for radiotherapy treatments, as well as radiotherapy capacity, have been recognised nationally as important issues.
"The decision to choose Kendal as the preferred site for this state-of-the-art cancer service is a clear indication of the long-term commitment of the NHS to a vibrant and thriving Westmorland General Hospital.”
Mr Halsall said: “The new service would build on some of the new services that we have developed recently at Kendal, including hosting the National Bowel Cancer Screening Programme for Cumbria and Morecambe Bay, and the introduction of day-case chemotherapy in Kendal during 2010.
“There is still a lot of work to be done to make sure it will be sustainable and something patients can reply upon for years to come."
Dr David Fyfe, consul-tant oncologist at UHMBT, said: “We know that getting to an oncology unit for chemotherapy can be stressful for cancer pat-ients and for us to be able to offer chemotherapy in Kendal for local patients is a welcome development. This is very good news for cancer patients.”
A campaign to bring cancer treatment services to the South Lakes was supported by both West-morland and Lonsdale MP Tim Farron and his Conservative parliamen-tary opponent Gareth McKeever.
It led to an 8,000-strong petition being handed in to Downing Street.
Mr Farron said: “This is great news and I just want to thank the community for their determination and their commitment.
“I know there is still so far to go but this is a great milestone and a fantastic early Christmas present for hundreds of local people.”
Mr McKeever said: “Both announcements are bril-liant news. They show what can be achieved when everybody works together.”
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