A patient diagnosed with cancer and needing radiotherapy may have to wait up to eight weeks for treatment at Cork University Hospital. The main problem, according to Dr Seamus O'Cathail, consultant in radiotherapy and clinical oncology, is lack of capacity.
The physical dimensions of the radiotherapy unit were designed in the 1960s, when nobody was having radiotherapy for cancers such as breast or lung. Now there are enough breast-cancer patients in Munster alone to keep one of the two radiotherapy machines in the unit in constant use.
"Our machines work to full capacity. We could do with twice the number. If you look at the numbers, there are 18,000 new cases of cancer diagnosed each year. Nine thousand of those require radiotherapy, and a third are in this hospital's catchment area. Each of the two machines may treat up to 600 cases a year. It's not difficult to work out the arithmetic and fairly obvious that not everyone can have service."
Anyone referred will be treated, he says. Waiting time varies from six to eight weeks. There are only 11 public radiotherapy beds, and if a patient is from a rural area, who will have to stay in hospital while being treated, they could be waiting over two months. "That is too long from a physical point of view, and far too long psychologically."
Ideally, says Dr O'Cathail, there should be four consultants and four machines. "The capacity is certainly not what it should be for Munster, but there are also problems in Dublin. Somewhere around the country 50 per cent of the population is being short-changed.