Dawn of new era in cancer care
Reporter: Marina Berry
Date published: 17 April 2009
A FIRST look inside the new unit.
FUNDRAISERS joined the Chronicle for a first glimpse inside the new £17million radiotherapy centre which is set to open in spring of next year at the Royal Oldham Hospital.
A total of nine patients will be treated every hour, and around 1,200 people will between them receive 18,000 radiotherapy treatments every year, saving many Oldham cancer patients from making gruelling trips to the Chrisite Hospital at Withington.
The benefits it will have for thousands of local people prompted the Oldham Chronicle to team up with Christie in a £100,000 appeal to help towards the cost of expensive equipment used to administer radiotherapy.
And this week the first public visit to view the building took place. Contractor Norwest Holst has up to 60 workmen on site at any time under project manager David Davies.
He works alongside Phil Turner, project manager from Christie, and architect Liz Davies, to make sure the finished radiotherapy centre meets specifications.
The ground-floor of the three-storey building will house two £1.3 million linear accelerators, which are used to administer radiotherapy.
They will be housed in a concrete bunker with walls reaching three metres thick to contain powerful radiotherapy rays.
Mr Turner gave the reassurance that no radiation would escape, and said the bunker would undergo rigorous testing before the centre opened.
Mr Turner said the radiotherapy unit was an integral part of the Christie Hospital.
He said: “It will not be an independent centre and is totally reliant on an efficient IT system linking Oldham, Withington and the equipment.”
Christie was forced to look for a new site for a radiotherapy centre to relieve pressure on its Withington services.
That was compounded by an annual increase in the number of cancer cases by between 1.5 and 2 per cent, and the fact radiotherapy is increasingly used to treat a wider range of cancers.
The Oldham site, which will employ 45 people, will initially treat people with breast and prostate cancer, and offer palliative care to people with lung cancer. In time, other cancers will be treated.
