CANCER patients throughout Worcestershire are being forced to bear the massive financial burden of changes in NHS treatment according to a report launched today by Macmillan Cancer Relief.

Free At The Point Of Delivery? revealed that cancer patients are spending an average of £380 on parking and travel to and from hospital for their life-saving treatment.

Macmillan is now calling on the Government to provide extra financial assistance and extend and promote schemes for reimbursement of costs to all people affected by cancer.

Meryl Fisher was diagnosed with cancer in May 2004 and had a 55-mile round trip to Wolverhampton every day for five weeks for radiotherapy treatment.

The 54-year-old school lunchtime superintendent, from Stourport-on-Severn, said she spent over £200 on petrol and parking costs.

"The trouble was the nearest hospitals where I could be treated were Wolverhampton or Cheltenham - not Kidder-minster or Worcester," she said.

"I was lucky in the respect that I had friends and family to help out with transport, but if I had to manage on my own, it would have been a huge financial drain.

"Some financial assistance - or advice on whether I could have received any - would have helped."

Macmillan say cancer patients often have to give up work and live on a lower income and travel is especially costly because the nature of treatment requires frequent hospital visits.

Peter Cardy, chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Relief, said it was outrageous that cancer patients should have the added stress of trying to find the money to travel for their life-saving treatment.

"That's why Macmillan is calling on the Government to allow cancer patients to get help with travel costs," he said.

WHAT THE REPORT FOUND:

Cancer services are becoming increasingly centralised and so patients have to travel greater distances for specialist services - round trips of over 100 miles in some cases.

Public transport simply is not suitable - five in six health professionals questioned said it did not provide a suitable travel option for cancer patients.

Patients feared not being able to get a seat, pain and fatigue making them too ill to stand, and nausea forcing them to get off public transport several times before finishing their journey. Contact with the public also increases patients' risk of infection.

Three in four UK hospitals are making money by charging patients up to £30 a day for parking and, of those, three in five offer no discounts for patients undergoing life-saving cancer treatment. Patients need to find cash for petrol.