Sharon Jennings, who was diagnosed with breast cancer last August, is having five weeks of radiotherapy treatment at Oxford’s Churchill Hospital. She – like many patients who live in the Marlborough area – have to make the daily round trip to Oxford for their cancer treatment.
Mrs Jennings, who is 44 and lives in Swindon says: “It takes me an hour each way to be driven to the Churchill Hospital by family members for what is five minutes of treatment for each session and that is time that I could much better use elsewhere.”
“In the Churchill Hospital waiting room I got talking to a few people and I couldn’t believe how many of them were from the Swindon area.” Now an appeal is being launched to bring the Oxford University Hospitals’ expertise to GWH.
It has long been NHS policy to concentrate very high-tech and costly new treatments and the expertise to use them, in centres of excellence. Not only has it been uneconomic for all hospitals to provide these treatments, but there were not enough specialists to go round and to use equipment often enough to maintain safe and effective treatment.
Now as the equipment becomes not quite so expensive and becomes more automated, it is possible for the Oxford University Hospitals Trust to work with GWH to bring the treatment much closer to the 340,000 people living in the Swindon and Wiltshire area.
The two-year appeal by Brighter Futures, Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust’s charity, will fund two linear accelerators, which will deliver the treatment provided by Oxford University Hospitals Trust (OUH) in a new radiotherapy centre at GWH.
Currently around 3,000 people are diagnosed with some form of cancer each year at GWH. In 2013-2014 around 700 patients made the 70-mile round-trip to OUH’s Churchill Hospital for radiotherapy. Treatment usually lasts for four to seven weeks of daily visits.
While this expansion of the OUH service is subject to a final approval process, the planning stages are well advanced and it is hoped that treatment could be available locally by the end of 2017.
Dr Guy Rooney, GWH Medical Director, and his team are working closely with colleagues in Oxford: “Bringing radiotherapy treatment to Swindon will make such a difference to local patients and their families, friends and carers and will be an excellent addition to the facilities already available at GWH.”
What is radiotherapy? High energy photons generated by a Linac (Linear Accelerator) pass through the body and are focused on cancerous cells to damage the cell DNA and destroy them. Patients will have had scans to pinpoint the exact location of cancerous tumours and then expert oncologists, radiographers and physicists will plan and deliver treatment, focusing the strongest doses directly on the tumour.
Radiotherapy is often delivered using a technique called ‘RapidArc’. As the radiotherapy machine rotates around the patient, the shape of the beam is constantly modified so that the treatment can be sculpted around unusual shaped tumours. RapidArc gives a much shorter treatment time for patients and so shortens waiting times.
Patients like Sharon Jennings known how tiring, depressing and costly the round trips to Oxford can be: “I am 100 per cent behind this fundraising appeal – it seems that everybody knows someone who has undergone cancer treatment or who had a family member or friend who has.”
The fund will be officially launched on Thursday (May 28.) How you can contribute: Text SWIN29 followed by your donation of £5 or £10 to 70070 Through the Brighter Futures website or the Justgiving website or via Virgin Money. Cheques payable to Brighter Futures can be sent to: The Fundraising Team, Brighter Futures, Commonhead Offices, GWH, Marlborough Road, Swindon, SN3 6BB.
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