Christie centre now a growing reality

Reporter: MARINA BERRY; Site pictures by ANTHONY MILLER
Date online: 17 April 2009

HOUSED on the ground floor of the new £17million, three-storey radiotherapy centre will be two £1.3 million linear accelerators, which are used to administer radiotherapy.

They will live in a concrete bunker with walls reaching three metres thick to contain powerful radiotherapy rays emitted from the machines.

The unit will also be home to a £550,000 CT simulator, used by clinicians and radiographers to pinpoint the exact spot to be targeted by radiotherapy, and to feed the information into the linear accelerators.

Both the linear accelerators and CT simulator will arrive in Oldham before the end of the year, and will undergo rigorous testing to make sure everything is working properly before the doors open in spring.

As well as medical equipment, the centre will have an information centre and library, a courtyard and a coffee lounge, laboratories, workshops, an education centre and seminar room for teaching purposes.

A generator will keep vital services running in the event of a power cut, and the centre will have direct IT links with the Christie.

There will be 10 free car parking spaces for use solely by patients, who are expected to have had their treatment and left within 30 minutes.

Pennine Acute Trust, which runs the Royal Oldham Hospital, will have use of almost two-thirds of the building - the whole of the top floor and two-thirds of the first floor.

The plans have yet to be finalised, but it will provide space for a number of extra beds.

Plans linked to the development also include a multi-storey car park which will be built close by and provide around 400 parking spaces.