Cancer treatment must be restricted to regional centres, says Martin

THE most effective way of delivering regional cancer services has been undermined by local politics, an expert evaluation of the Government's National Cancer Strategy has found.

Launching the evaluation by Deloitte Management Consultants yesterday, Health Minister Micheál Martin said some county hospitals had low levels of cancer surgery at a time when international best practice pointed to the centralising of cancer services.

"Clearly, we need to do what we have been doing in regard to the treatment of breast cancer concentrating resources in specific centres," the minister said.

"We must face the reality that we cannot continue to expect that we can deliver the highest quality of cancer services across over 30 acute hospitals," said Mr Martin.

The evaluation by Deloitte concluded there were too many consultants performing oncology surgery in too many hospitals.

"We simply do not have the patient caseload to support the current broadly based organisation of oncology services," he said.

The message was clear, he said, and it had to be delivered to the public better outcomes were achieved where there were multi-disciplinary teams in centres of excellence.

Mr Martin said people would also be better informed in the new national health strategy about the improved outcomes that could be achieved in centres of excellence.

The strategy, expected in March 2004, will shape and prioritise Ireland's cancer services up to 2010.

The chairman of the National Cancer Forum, Professor Paul Redmond, said cancer was a complex disease and had to be managed in a multi-disciplinary fashion at centres where the results compared with the best in the world.

"We really need to change the mind-set of the Irish population and let them begin to realise that they have got to get to centres where multi-disciplinary teams are in action," the professor of surgery at University Hospital Cork declared.

The Irish Cancer Society saiddeclared last night that it totally supported the development of centres of excellence because they had been shown to cut mortality by 20% across all cancers.

The society also believes surgeons conducting cancer- related surgery should be dedicated cancer specialists with procedures set at a level where they can be managed competently.

It also called for an immediate nationwide extension of the Irish Cervical Screening Programme for all women between 25 and 60, The review of the 1996 strategy the first national integrated cancer plan was also highly critical of the level of radiotherapy services.

It recommended that radiation oncology services be expanded to ensure that all patients had reasonable access to this service. "The Government accepts there is a major deficit in this area," said Mr Martin.