Donegal cancer sufferers will have access to radiotherapy services in Belfast from next year, the North's health minister Shaun Woodward announced yesterday at a seminar also attended by Minister for Health Mary Harney.
It is expected that about 100 people from Donegal will use the radiotherapy treatment centre at Belfast City Hospital, thus avoiding long round trips for treatment in Dublin.
Donegal is such a vast county that it can take five or six hours to travel to Dublin. However, patients from Donegal, particularly those from the east of the county, should be able to arrive at the cancer centre in Belfast, due to open in March, in about half that time.
The cost of providing the service for Donegal patients will be paid by the Department of Health in the Republic, explained Ms Harney and Mr Woodward at yesterday's seminar in Belfast organised by the North-South Health Services Partnership.
"This is a radical example of co-operation between the health services North and South to provide a service that will make a real difference to the lives of cancer patients," said Ms Harney.
Mr Woodward stressed that this facility would not be to the detriment of cancer sufferers in Northern Ireland.
"My first priority is to ensure that these high quality services are available to the Northern Ireland population," he said.
"But I believe there are opportunities to use spare physical capacity in Belfast to provide radiotherapy services to some patients from Donegal without affecting the services available to local patients," Mr Woodward added .
He said additional staff will be required to deal with the extra workload and this would be funded by the Irish Government. He believed that if there were other health services the South could provide for Northern patients that similar arrangements with the Government could be established.
"It would be outrageous if we had spare capacity here in Belfast for the new centre that we have got, and we do have spare physical capacity. It would be appalling if we did not make that available to people in the Republic. Similarly we would expect reciprocation of those arrangements," added Mr Woodward.
Ms Harney said there were about 250 cancer sufferers in Donegal who were in need of radiotherapy.
She expected about 100 of them would use the Belfast Cancer Centre, while the remainder living in the more southern parts of Donegal would continue to use Dublin.
She said the department would provide transport for Donegal patients using Belfast.
"The more we work together the more we can provide better services for patients," the Minister said.
Ms Harney and Mr Woodward said co-operation was continuing in a number of health areas including developing an island of Ireland strategy to try to cope with avian flu should it break out in Ireland.
