Cancer care marchers in show of strength

IN the Irish Examiner of Saturday, March 20, under the headline ‘Protesters demand cancer services,’ it was stated that ‘hundreds’ attended the protest in Waterford.

The gardaí put the number at 6,000 marching over the failure to provide multidisciplinary cancer care to a regional population of 422,000 people.

While patients in Dublin, Galway and Cork will receive three modalities of cancer treatment on a multidisciplinary basis, offering at least 20% better outcome, patients in the south-east will be forced to leave their regional cancer centre for radiotherapy, against international evidence of best practice.

The people of the south-east will not accept this cancer treatment ‘apartheid;’ they will not accept a reduced outcome. They simply want the same chance of survival which is on offer to the patients in Dublin, Cork and Galway.

Jane Bailey,

Cancer Care Alliance,

Dunmore East,

Co Waterford.