The plan to offer cancer patients in the northwest the opportunity to travel to Belfast rather than Dublin for radiotherapy treatment from next year will be of no benefit to many cancer sufferers in Donegal, campaigners said.
Donegal Action for Cancer Care (DACC), which has been campaigning for a radiotherapy service in the northwest region, said just as it took hours for patients to travel to Dublin it would also take hours for many patients from west Donegal to travel to Belfast City Hospital for treatment.
Lynn McDevitt, a spokeswoman for DACC, said the only solution was for the Government to provide a satellite service at Letterkenny General Hospital.
"Belfast travelling wise does not benefit us at all," she said. She said several women in Donegal had already opted for mastectomies when diagnosed with breast cancer so they wouldn't have to travel to Dublin for radiotherapy.
They couldn't afford to leave young families for days at a time, she said. Taking children on long journeys for cancer treatment was also very difficult, she added, and would continue to be so unless a treatment service was provided in the northwest. "Parents up here have to get a child with leukaemia out of bed at 4am to get to Dublin for a 9 or 10am appointment. Even with an able-bodied child it takes a long time to get to Dublin in a car but with a sick child it takes a lot longer," she said.
Ms McDevitt, a mother of five who is in remission from cancer, said DACC would continue its campaign for local services and hopes to meet Minister for Health Mary Harney again.
Ms Harney said about 100 cancer patients a year from the northwest would be able to avail of radiotherapy in Belfast.
But Prof John Armstrong, a consultant radiation oncologist in Dublin, said substantially more than 100 patients from Donegal would need radiotherapy every year. He said over 500 people in Donegal were diagnosed with cancer every year and about 50 per cent of cancer patients should get radiotherapy.
"It's a long journey from Donegal to Belfast. It isn't the ultimate solution for patients from that part of the world," he said.
"There would be a strong argument to consider a local service as part of a network of radiation cancer treatment services throughout the country.
"Small centres are viable when they are linked into a bigger network," he added.