Anger at cancer treatment plans (From Wharfedale Observer)
Get involved: send your pictures, video, news and views by texting WONEWS to 80360, or email
Anger at cancer treatment plans
5:54pm Wednesday 10th October 2007 in Local news By Paul Langan
A HEALTH campaigner who has twice beaten cancer has warned that lives will be at risk if patients currently treated at Airedale General Hospital have to travel to Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI).
Cancer patients receiving chemotherapy at Airedale Hospital in Steeton, near Keighley, will be transferred to the BRI if they become ill, a report has revealed.
Currently, those who develop a high temperature, severe vomiting and diarrhoea and need complex' treatment go to Airedale's Haematology and Oncology Day Unit (HODU) as in-patients.
But under the changes expected to come into force by the end of the month, the unit will lose four or five beds and in-patients will instead have to travel long distances to BRI.
Former cancer patient David Howe, 59, of Wrexham Road, Burley-in-Wharfedale, has now urged health bosses not to rush into any changes.
He said: "If this centralisation of services has to happen, then transport needs should be addressed before the closure of beds occurs at Airedale General Hospital. These patients are already very poorly and the sad fact is that we are probably going to see some of them die because of travelling the extra distances to Bradford.
"I am very lucky. I have a wife who drives. But if I had to get public transport I would have to go from Burley-in-Wharfedale to Bradford by getting myself to the railway station and to Bradford, and then get a taxi."
A spokesman for the Airedale NHS Trust stressed the hospital's cancer ward would not be closed.
She said: "For the great majority of cancer patients, care will still be local at Airedale Hospital. A very small number of patients who have serious complications as a result of their chemotherapy, which can be life-threatening, will be treated in a specialist ward at Bradford Royal Infirmary.
"Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has the facilities and expertise to provide specialist cancer care."
