Better cancer care, closer to home in the Southern Interior

Today was the official opening of the new and improved radiation therapy treatment unit and a brachytherapy suite in the BC Cancer Agency’s Centre for the Southern Interior.

This is really important because we know that the further a patient has to travel for their care, the more stressful it is, and the larger the financial burden it places on them and their family.

And until the new BC Cancer Agency Centre for the North opens in 2012, the Southern Interior continues seeing patients for radiation therapy from everywhere in the province outside of the Lower Mainland and Vancouver Island. 

For all of these patients, if they can’t receive their treatment in Kelowna, they have to travel to the Lower Mainland – because the only way to receive radiation therapy in B.C. is at a BC Cancer Agency Centre.

So, for a specialized therapy like prostate brachytherapy, which has proven to have really positive results for men with prostate cancer, patients can now receive this treatment closer to home through the whole process – from their initial intake to the procedure itself and all the way through to follow up.

My colleague Cynthia Waldek-Peters, our Director of Development in the Southern Interior, has this to say about the news:

Through the generous support of BC Cancer Foundation donors who donated the  seed money, a less invasive treatment for prostate cancer is now available in the Southern Interior.The campaign to bring brachytherapy to the Southern Interior began in 2003 and raised over $321,000 to bring the program closer to patients.

This has been six years in the making, and we (along with the patients in B.C. who will benefit) are extremely grateful.

You can read more about the opening here.

Warm regards,
Doug