A RADIOTHERAPY unit to treat cancer patients in Jersey would be ready by 2027 at the earliest and cost around £1 million more a year than sending patients to the UK, according to a new government report.
Demand for radiotherapy will also rise by 50% by 2043 owing to the Island’s ageing population, according to a feasibility report presented in the States yesterday.
The report gives options on whether the new hospital should include a dedicated radiotherapy unit but no recommendations, with the decision ultimately for the next States Assembly, according to Health Minister Richard Renouf. In the meantime, he has recommended improving the current arrangements, through increasing travel support and accommodation.
Deputy Renouf said radiotherapy was a ‘specialist service which would not normally be available locally to a population of just over 100,000 people’.
He added: ‘However, we know that on-Island radiotherapy facilities are something that many Islanders would wish to have. It would allow patients to be in a familiar environment, close to family and friends at what can be a lonely and anxious time, which can also impact mental health and emotional wellbeing. Treatment in the UK usually involves between 20 and 30 overnight stays but sometimes it can be as long as 45 nights. We know that some patients choose not to undergo treatment because of the difficulties of travel and the strain of separation from their families.’
A Jersey unit would cost an estimated £20m more than the status quo between 2022 and 2043, and could not ‘realistically be deployed before 2027’.
Representatives of the Our Hospital project, responsible for the proposed new facility at Overdale, have said situating the unit there ‘would unacceptably disrupt the current plan and timescales’ but may be a possibility on the wider site, meaning it would probably be situated elsewhere as a standalone unit or also incorporate a cancer centre. It would include one machine called a Linear Accelerator or ‘LINAC’, which is housed in a thick concrete bunker to protect people from radiation exposure.
The review into services was prompted by a successful proposal brought to the States in February by Deputy Montfort Tadier, who lost both his parents to cancer.
Yesterday Deputy Tadier said the report ‘very much leaves the door open’ for provision in Jersey ‘if there is a political will’, adding that the cost did not ‘seem to be as high as we thought’.
An Island unit would help meet the need of some breast cancer and palliative therapy patients, who were either unable or unwilling to travel to the UK. However, the report stated that 20% of patients would still have to be treated in the UK, due to complexity and specialist equipment required.
Radiotherapy is currently delivered through five English NHS trusts, with the majority of patients treated at Southampton. In 2019, 221 Jersey patients were treated in the UK, a figure the Health Department uses as an indicator of need. During the pandemic those numbers dropped to 164 and 156 in 2020 and 2021 respectively.
Even with increasing demand over the years, a Jersey unit would be 48% ‘under-utilised’, according to the government. This could rise to an estimated maximum of around 80%, if it included Guernsey patients and private patients, although at this early stage the government said that was speculation. However, the benefit of being under-utilised would be reduced waiting times, said Deputy Renouf.
There were also risks to having only one LINAC machine due to potential power outages, according to the government, whereas the ‘centres of excellence’ the Island had access to elsewhere serving larger populations had between seven and 15 which could be used as back-ups.
