TRAVELLING thousands of miles for radiotherapy while fighting for your life against cancer is a burden that, in an ideal world, nobody should have to bear.

Patients, their families and medical staff hope NHS Worcestershire’s draft cancer strategy for the next four years, now open to full public consultation, will remove this painful thorn in the side of cancer care.

Patients and leading cancer strategists are calling the strategy a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for the public to shape the future of the county’s cancer services.

The heart of the strategy is to provide chemotherapy, radiotherapy and surgery as near to home as possible for patients.

With the consultation closing in a month’s time, this may be the last chance for the people of Worcestershire to have their say.

Campaigner Paul Crawford, aged 69, of Highfield Close, Droitwich, was fortunate enough to have his daughter, Emma, to take him from his home to the oncology centre in Cheltenham for radiotherapy after he developed cancer in his throat which spread from one of his tonsils.

Given the all-clear in December 2006, he is never less than complimentary about the high standard of care he received, but is adamant others should have a smoother and a shorter journey than he did.

He said: “When I had my radiotherapy I used to go about six times a week for six weeks. The journey was around 50 minutes each way and on one day I had to go twice in one day. At the end of it we must have done close on 3,000 miles. My daughter was the driver because her boss gave her permission to take me. He was really very kind. She coped with it very well but it was stressful at times. Without her I would have had to rely on other forms of transport. That really is a hell of a journey and some people have nobody to help them.

“One of the stresses was travelling down one of the busiest motorways in the country at peak times when people were going to work and coming back feeling sore from the treatment. When I came back each day I put my head down.

I felt quite shattered.

“The treatment is weakening.

The skin ruptured on my face and it left me with a lot of burns and open sores. I just wanted to get home so I could relax. I could have well done without that journey.”

Radiotherapy is needed for about 40 per cent of patients diagnosed with cancer in Worcestershire and demand is rising all the time, above existing capacity levels.

The national target, set down by the National Radiotherapy Advisory Group (NRAG), is to provide 40,000 individual sessions of radiotherapy per million people by 2011 and 54,000 by 2016.

Worcestershire has a population of about 600,000 and they receive 18,000 individual sessions of radiotherapy a year at the moment.

There are between 4,000 and 5,000 new cancer patients in Worcestershire each year.

If the county achieves the recommendations set down by NRAG, county patients should be receiving 24,000 sessions by 2011, rising to 32,000 by 2016.

The way health bosses want to manage this rising demand is to create a satellite facility on one of Worcestershire’s hospital sites providing its own radiotherapy.

This would involve installing three linear accelerators (the technology which provides radiotherapy) by 2012, rising to four by 2016 at a capital cost of about £14 million.

Their location has not yet been formally agreed but they would be housed in bunkers at either Worcestershire Royal Hospital in Worcester or the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch.

Worcester is the site preferred by the West Midlands Cancer Intelligence Group, but other factors such as space and availability of land must also be considered.

If the strategy is a success Adel Makar, a consultant urological surgeon and lead clinician for cancer services at Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, estimates that 95 per cent of cancer patients will never have to leave Worcestershire for treatment.

The remaining five per cent would be patients who need more specialist treatment for cancer – for example, paediatric tumours which would be treated in Birmingham Children’s Hospital.

Mr Makar said: “I would like to congratulate NHS Worcestershire for its leadership, courage, foresight and commitment to patients. It is very important for the population of Worcestershire to engage with this serious consultation to make their views loud and clear, otherwise they will carry on travelling long distances and having a disjointed service depending on their postcode for the next 20 years before this opportunity comes our way again.”

The state-of-the-art linear accelerators would mean more effective targeting of tumours, less damage to surrounding tissue and less risk of complications.

At the moment, the county provides chemotherapy but those who need radiotherapy have to travel to Cheltenham, Wolverhampton, Coventry or Birmingham, depending on where they live in the county and the type of cancer they have.

The ideal scenario is for a satellite unit in Worcester linked to one of these main oncology centres, although Worcestershire has yet to select a partner.

Mr Makar estimates that a patient with prostate cancer has to travel between 3,500 and 4,000 miles in just over seven weeks for radiotherapy sessions which last about 10 minutes each.

To add to the stress is the cost of travelling which Mr Makar estimates is a combined £1 million a year for patients who cover their own travelling expenses and £500,000 for NHS Worcestershire, which subsidises the costs of those who cannot afford the journey.

The strategy document compiled by NHS Worcestershire acknowledges that “daily travel is considered to be a major burden for service users and their families”.

The situation is further confused by the existence of three cancer ‘networks’ – Three Counties serving south Worcestershire, Arden serving Redditch and Bromsgrove and Greater Midlands covering Wyre Forest.

Mr Makar hopes the strategy will make things simpler for patients and the clinicians who treat them, freeing up more of their time to focus on patients instead of paperwork and meetings with different organisations, all with their own rules and protocols.

We are living longer and more and more people are likely to need these services in the future, which is why patients and cancer experts are calling for more input from the public. One day, heaven forbid, they may need this service and the closer it is the better.

As Mr Crawford says, “Come on, Worcestershire, your county needs you”.

How to get involved

There are further meetings on the future of cancer services in Worcestershire at Priory Lodge, Malvern, on Monday, July 12, at 2pm and at Evesham Town Hall on Thursday, August 5, at 6.30pm.

The consultation ends on Friday, August 6. People can have their say by visiting worcestershire.nhs.uk and searching for ‘cancer strategy’.

For further information, call NHS Worcestershire’s community engagement team on 01905 733745.