Public patients to avail of new private cancer facilities
Assistant national director of the HSE’s National Hospital’s Office, Tom Finn, said the only issues delaying public patients being treated at the Whitfield Cancer Centre in Waterford were medical and technical.
Funding was not a problem, he insisted.
The centre has the only linear accelerator (a machine that creates high-energy radiation to treat cancers) in the south-east and has now got a second machine that will be ready for use at the start of 2007.
Currently, patients with cancer living in the region are having to travel up to Cork or Dublin to receive treatment that lasts just minutes.
The centre also confirmed yesterday that the first cancer patient ever to receive radiotherapy in Waterford will be treated privately at the centre this week.
Mr Finn said the HSE welcomed the establishment of the centre, a joint venture between Irish healthcare consortium Euro Care International and UPMC Cancer Centres, one of the largest networks of cancer physicians and healthcare specialists in the United States.
But Mr Finn’s comment on RTÉ Radio yesterday that the centre was slow in contacting the HSE prompted an angry response from Whitfield.
The centre emphasised it had spent a very considerable amount of time over the last two and a half years on discussions and correspondence with various HSE personnel on having the centre made available to all who needed it.
Managing director of UPMC Cancer Centres International, Michael Costello said he had been in contact with the HSE’s chief executive Brendan Drumm, in September, and with the HSE’s south east network manager Richard Dooley about sending public patients for radiotherapy to Whitfield.
Mr Finn claimed that, up until the middle of September, his office had received no contact from the Whitfield Centre and that the HSE had initiated such contact.
CONNECT WITH US TODAY
Be the first to know the latest news and updates
