A NEW cancer centre hailed as the most exciting healthcare development in the North West for 50 years will EXCLUDE patients from East Lancashire when it opens.

The Lancashire and Lakeland Radiotherapy Unit in Preston was expected to offer a specialist service on the doorstep of hundreds of people in the district.

But the Evening Telegraph can reveal that East Lancashire patients are at the back of the queue for treatment and will not be able to use the centre until 1999 - two years after it opens.

Health chiefs have agreed that people living in the northern end of Lancashire, who face the longest journeys to Manchester's Christie Hospital for life-saving radiotherapy, should benefit from the centre first.

Contract talks are taking place between health chiefs to allow the service to start for East Lancashire people in the year 1999/2000. This would require the centre to purchase extra radiotherapy equipment.

The cancer centre will be developed over a four-year period and will immediately accept patients from the Morecambe Bay, South Lancashire and North West Lancashire Health Authority areas.

The only East Lancashire patients eligible to receive treatment straight away will be people from Longridge.

The centre will eventually take over the treatment of most Lancashire patients who currently go to the Christie for radio- therapy.

But the latest move means local patients will continue to make the arduous trip to the Christie for the stamina-sapping treatment for at least two more years.

Bev Humphrey, East Lancashire's director of strategic planning and contracting, said: "While the centre will benefit everybody eventually, it was felt crucial that people living in the northern end of the county came in first. "They face even further journeys to the Christie than East Lancashire patients."

The Preston centre will be known as the "Parent" of the proposed development of cancer services in Blackburn and Burnley hospitals.

A cancer review group has been set up to develop treatment for lung, breast and stomach cancer and palliative care through the linking of surgeons and physicians at Blackburn and Burnley hospitals.

Health Secretary Stephen Dorrell described the proposed Preston centre as the "most significant advancement in healthcare in the North West in the last 50 years" when he cut the turf to start the building work last October.

The centre has been inundated with job applications even though medical posts have not yet been advertised.

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