A £5 MILLION cancer unit is poised to open on the doorstep of East Lancashire - but patients from this area are not expected to be able to use it until 1999.

The Lancashire and Lakeland Cancer Unit with Radiotherapy, based at Royal Preston Hospital, will formally open to patients on February 24.

The unit will provide radiotherapy services for the population of Lancashire and South Cumbria.

Contract talks are ongoing between East Lancashire Health Authority and the Preston Acute Hospitals NHS Trust.

Patients living in other health authority areas nearer the unit will be accepted for treatment first.

East Lancashire Health Authority is hoping that local patients will eventually have a choice of centres to go to for radiotherapy - the Preston unit or the Christie Hospital in Manchester. The new unit will be equipped with two £500,000 linear accelerators which produce high energy X-rays for the treatment of tumours.

It has been developed in co-operation with the Christie Hospital and cancer patients may no longer have to travel as far for treatment.

Next to the unit will be Bowland House which will provide "hotel style" accommodation for people undergoing radiotherapy who live a long way from the unit and who do not need inpatient care,.

The new unit is part of Preston Acute Hospitals NHS Trust's strategy to develop Royal Preston as a tertiary hospital. The changes are in line with the 1994 Calman Report which reviewed cancer services nationally.

The Royal Preston hopes to eventually become the North West's third cancer centre after the Christie and Clatterbridge on the Wirral.

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