Project manager puts safety first
Reporter: MARINA BERRY
Date published: 27 May 2009
Christie in Oldham Appeal
POWERFUL machines used to treat patients at Oldham’s new £17 million radiotherapy centre will be housed in a huge concrete bunker with walls up to three metres thick.
Two linear accelerators, each costing £1.3 million, are due to be up and running by Spring next year.
Phil Turner, the Christie’s project manager for the Oldham site, said safety was paramount, and gave the assurance: “There is no possibility of a leak.
“Radiation can only travel in straight lines, and the bunker has been constructed in such a way to prevent any escape,” he said.
“It will undergo stringent testing, and if there is a problem it won’t open.”
It took 180 lorry loads of concrete to form the bunker, which has walls three metres think in the parts which surround the machines.
Phil explained that X-rays are produced by electricity, and when the machines are turned off there will be no radioactive emissions.
Oldham was chosen by the Christie Hospital as the first site for a satellite centre, with a second following hot on its heels at the former Hope Hospital, now called Salford Royal Hospital.
The world-famous cancer hospital is battling to cope with rising numbers of people who need radiotherapy treatment.
The pressure is down to both an almost 2 per cent annual increase in the number of cancer cases, and radiotherapy being increasingly used to treat a wider range of cancers.
Around half of people with cancer will benefit in some way from radiotherapy treatment, either as a “cure,” to reduce the size of a tumour, or for symptom relief. The Christie had no room for expansion, and also wanted to take treatment closer to patients in a bid to make their lives easier.
The fact that people have to travel five days a week, often for up to six weeks, was significant in helping the Christie decide where to site its first radiotherapy centre. Radiotherapy is a focussed beam of high energy X-rays which are shaped and directed by a linear accelerator onto a precise spot to destroy cancer cells and not living tissue.
“It is a radical treatment, and having to troop from Oldham all the way round the M60 to Withington every day for five or six weeks is not always easy for someone who is feeling ill,” said Phil. “We also believe having a centre in Oldham will improve uptake of radiotherapy among older and sicker people, especially those receiving palliative care, who may currently seek other options, especially if they don’t have access to transport.”
The Oldham site will initially treat people with breast and prostate cancer, and offer palliative care to people with lung cancer. Phil said: “We have to start somewhere. It would be daft to say we would treat everyone straight away. Some cancers still need the services and support we have at Withington.”
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