The Department of Health says around 1,500 cancer patients annually will benefit from ‘a cutting edge cancer treatment’ – proton beam therapy – which will be available at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust’s Oak Road Patient Treatment Centre in Manchester, and at University College London Hospital, from 2017, thanks to an investment of ‘up to £250 million’ by the NHS.
Equipping both sites with proton beam therapy machines will necessitate the construction of new facilities, and the DH has set aside public capital for the scheme. Proton beam therapy is a radiotherapy technology which uses a precision highenergy beam of particles to destroy cancer cells, and is particularly suitable for treating complex childhood cancers, increasing success rates, and reducing side-effects such as deafness, loss of IQ, and secondary cancers. A DH statement added: “Given the complex nature of the treatment and facilities, proton beam therapy will not be fully available in England until 2017. Until then, the NHS will continue to fund patients in need of PBT to go abroad – either to Switzerland, or the USA. By 2014/15 the NHS will be spending £30 m per year sending up to 400 patients overseas.” Health Secretary, Andrew Lansley, added: “Developing a national proton beam therapy service is vital to ensuring that our cancer facilities are world-class. Once this service is in place, the Christie and UCLH’s unparalleled cancer facilities will enable more patients to get this treatment, including those for whom travelling abroad for long periods is not possible.” Andrew Lansley made a commitment to the programme in 2010 when he pledged over £50 m across the Spending Review period to allow up to 400 ‘high priority’ patients to be treated abroad while the DH developed the business case to establish a national service in England. This showed that introducing PBT services at The Christie and UCLH would be ‘both affordable and deliverable in the short term’. Should further national capacity be needed, the DH says the ‘preferred’ third site is University Hospitals Birmingham, ‘subject to normal business case processes and the views of the NHS Commissioning Board’. The UCLH service will be delivered from the Trust’s central London campus; the proposed site has direct access to its existing radiotherapy department, and is very close to the new University College Hospital Macmillan Cancer Centre, which opened on 2 April.
