BY CIARAN WOODS
A LEADING cancer specialist in the North West has expressed concerns about the quality of services available to local people, if planned proposals to strip cancer services from Altnagelvin go ahead.
Strabane Council has thrown its full weight behind the campaign for the retention of pathology services at Altnagelvin, and were this week told how the proposals would increase the time taken for results, end cross-border initiatives, and spell the end of medical research in the North-West.
The lead clinician at Altnagelvin, Dr Dermot Huhes called for an expansion of the facilities on offer, instead of a centralisation of services in Belfast.
During the presentation on Monday night, Dr Hughes said the pathology department provides cancer screening programmes, diagnosis, staging and determines treatment options available.
He also emphasised the important educational and training links which currently exist with the University of Ulster, which would be lost under the new proposals, with links only to Queens' University.
He said pathologists would have to work in isolation at Altnagelvin.
Dr Hughes also stressed the fact that samples having to travel to Belfast meant a less timely service, and said that the quality of service could be of differential quality as they will not retain or recruit professional staff, with a loss of bio-medical skills from the North-West.
In support of the retention of services at Altnagelvin, the specialist stressed the fact that the facility there is the newest in Ireland, and the only site in the North with new technologies, as well as the fact that it has extended cervical screening to Donegal.
The new proposals would mean that complex care would exist only in Belfast, and that cross-border initiatives would stop. Concerns were also raised that the proposed new service would be unmanageable, with up to 180,000 users in the next 10 years.
The specialist instead called for an expansion of the already funded services at Altnagelvin in order to achieve best value for money, facilitation of reconfiguration in Belfast, and the use of facilities and links with the University of Ulster to expand research in the North-West.
