€5.8m to be spent upgrading hospitals

IRELAND’S cancer chief is spending almost €6 million building up the capacity of the State’s eight specialist cancer treatment hospitals.

Director of the National Cancer Control Programme Professor Tom Keane will also be using the €5.8m allocated to him to hire more specialists and upgrade equipment.

The money was allocated to Prof Keane following his review of the requirements of the eight hospitals where most cancer services will be concentrated by the end of 2009. Responsibility for cancer services will transfer to his office at the end of this month.

Prof Keane expects that breast cancer services will be transferred from hospitals in Drogheda, Co Louth, Tralee, Co Kerry, and Kilkenny to the bigger centres within six months.

Breast cancer treatment services in Castlebar, Co Mayo, and Sligo will be moved to University Hospital Galway by the year end.

Prof Keane said it was intended that the initial diagnosis of cancer and surgical treatment would be delivered at one of the eight specialist cancer centres, but all other treatment would be delivered within the community.

The professor is on leave for a two-year period from his post as provincial radiation programme leader for the British Columbia Cancer Agency in Canada.

He has been charged with overseeing the National Cancer Control Programme, including the transfer of all crucial cancer treatment to the eight designated specialist cancer centres. There will be four designated specialist cancer centres in Dublin and one each in Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Galway.

British Columbia is similar in size to Ireland and the model of cancer care delivered in the region is internationally as successful.

Prof Keane told a recent Oireachtas health committee that the aim of the strategy would be to reduce the incidence of cancer, reduce cancer deaths and improve the quality of life for people living with cancer.

Describing problems in the system, he said resources were too widely spread and often duplicated and was anxious to reduce the time between a patient presenting with symptoms and a diagnosis being made.

And he has pointed out that the practice of Irish hospitals of routinely recalling all patients who have had cancer for check-ups, years after they have been successfully treated for the disease, should end.

He pointed out that in British Columbia patients are brought back for follow-up interventions at cancer centres only if there was evidence that such interventions was likely to improve their chances of survival.