Cancer treatment - Victims need action not promises

THE plight of a family decimated

No words of Health Minister Micheál Martin can lessen Margaret Turner's sorrow at seeing her mother struck down by a disease which both she and her sister have also contracted.

Instead of rebutting opposition claims, the minister's time would be better spent pressing the Government for funds to deliver a long-awaited radiotherapy unit for Waterford, where he launched a new MRI scanner and breast care facility yesterday.

Minister Martin claims it is disingenuous and unfair to compare the lack of funding for a national breast check service with the money pouring into the animal disease eradication programme.

But in the eyes of hundreds of women such as Margaret Turner, forced to travel long distances for cancer detection and treatment, the spectacle of a slanging match between the Government and opposition spokesmen about this grim disease verges on the obscene.

What they need is action not promises.