Madam, - As the country welcomes back Prof Tom Keane to oversee the development of our cancer services, many are calling for their local hospitals to be included as centres of excellence. Existing expertise and geographical difficulties are cited as the main reasons for this.
Letterkenny is to be a distant satellite of the Galway Centre for Excellence. The recent very positive experience of one of my patients attending Galway attests to the wisdom of this model of treatment.
However the impact of geography on the families of cancer sufferers cannot be ignored. My practice area is exactly 300 km away from Galway, yet we can see Altnagelvin Hospital perched on a hill in Derry 30 km away.
Many of my patients work in Northern Ireland but are precluded from seeking treatment there, as they are resident in the Republic. No satisfactory explanation has ever been given as to why a cross-Border model was not advanced. My understanding is that there were no objections in principle on the political or medical front in Northern Ireland.
To her credit Mary Harney has already sought co-operation and received agreement on a temporary arrangement for radiotherapy at Belfast for Donegal patients. So why the hold-up in advancing a workable model for Donegal and the northwest or is it just a case of Donegal waiting in line, like in the case of BreastCheck, still to be "rolled out"?
Prof Keane will be interested to hear that hundreds of Donegal women travel to Belfast for screening mammograms carried out by Action Cancer, a Northern Ireland-based cancer charity.
An audit in this practice identified 100 women having travelled in recent months to Belfast.
This story is replicated through the county as buses are chartered from all parts of Donegal to go to Belfast, for this particular brand of health tourism (10 buses currently waiting to travel).
We have to be very grateful to Action Cancer for accepting Donegal women, their overall professionalism and their expertise. I have no doubt that this service has led to earlier detection of breast cancer for many women in Donegal. - Yours, etc,
Dr DANIEL McGINLEY,
Moville Health Centre,
Co Donegal.