RadCan is a charity that has been set up, specifically, to raise funds to provide a radiotherapy facility at the Basingstoke & North Hants Foundation Trust Hospital.
Friends of Basingstoke & North Hampshire Radiotherapy Cancer Services About
**NEWS UPDATE** – Walk for Radcan
Sunday 20th May 2012
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What is RadCan all about?
With latest Cancer Research figures showing nearly 310,000 people diagnosed with cancer in the UK in 2008 – that’s around 504 cases for every 100,000 people – the chances are that each of us will either be affected by cancer or know someone who is.
Many people with cancer need to have radiotherapy as part of their treatment. This involves the use of high energy x-rays and similar rays (such as electrons) and can be used to cure some cancers, to reduce the chance of recurrence, or for symptom relief. It works by destroying cancer cells in the area that’s treated.
The Basingstoke and North Hampshire NHS Foundation Trust Hospital has a designated cancer care unit providing the specialist skills and expertise needed to treat cancer, as well as a dedicated oncology and haematology unit (Elizabeth Hall Centre) providing inpatient, day case and outpatient chemotherapy for patients. We are extremely fortunate to have such wonderful services locally.
However, what the hospital currently lacks is the facility to treat onsite those patients who need radiotherapy, so if you live in the hospital’s catchment area and are unfortunate enough to need it, you’ll have to travel to Southampton or Guildford.
This can mean making daily journeys for periods of up to six weeks at a time and patients often have to make the daily return journey hot on the heels of surgery and chemotherapy, at a point in time when they are at their lowest and most vulnerable.
Last year more than 300 patients from the hospital’s catchment area had to travel to Southampton for treatment. Such journeys are not in the best interest of patients or the NHS, so please support RadCan and help to enhance the cancer care facilities at the BNHFT with this much needed satellite radiotherapy service.
Who can…RadCan!
What can be done to help?
Discussions have taken place with the hospitals and the Hampshire Primary Care Trust and it is believed that a satellite radiotherapy unit could be established on the Basingstoke site.
Radiotherapy units cost a great deal of money but with the help and support of people in the Basingstoke area this RadCAN be achieved!
How RadCan came to be…
RadCan is a registered charity, number 1140906. It began in 2009 as the dream of someone who knew all too well the trials involved in making those daily journeys to Southampton – here’s to the day it will end with a new state-of-the-art facility in Basingstoke for the benefit of all those in our area who desperately need it.
If you’d like to learn more about the role that radiotherapy plays in the treatment of cancer you may find the following links useful: