Transferred cancer patients 'dying in under 24 hours'

CANCER patients who were forced to travel from the south-east to Dublin for radiotherapy have died less than 24 hours after receiving treatment due to the strain of the journey.

Ian Frazer, a consultant radiologist at St Luke's Hospital in Dublin, said these seriously ill patients were entitled to pain-control radiotherapy as a form of palliative care, describing the lack of facilities closer to home as "a very serious deficit in service".

"Sometimes patients deteriorate in the time between being referred and going for radiotherapy and we subsequently learn they have died shortly after having treatment," he said.