Health Minister: £70m to replace cancer machines

ODN

Health Minister Karin Smyth says £70m will upgrade radiotherapy machines at 28 hospitals. She says many are over 10 years old and prone to breakdowns, delaying care. The new machines will speed up treatment and improve outcomes for patients and staff alike.   Report by Etemadil. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn

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00:00So today I'm announcing £70 million investment in 28 new machines that really focus targeted

00:06treatment on tumours. It means that the patient has fewer appointments, that's good for the

00:14patient, it's also good for the waiting list overall because it means that these machines

00:18can see more patients and that's really important for getting down those waiting lists. So really

00:23using technology to get better patient experience and crucially reducing those waiting lists.

00:28One of the key things that we found on coming into office and as reported by Lord Darsey

00:34is how poor the equipment that our staff are working with is. So some of these machines that

00:39we're talking about replacing today are more than 10 years old and they do break down and that means

00:43cancelled appointments and many people will understand you know where that happens but

00:48it's really frustrating and obviously hugely bad for people's anxiety and getting treated so

00:53these are more reliable machines they will see more people the treatment is more targeted so that's

00:59actually better for patients recovery but also what people have been working with is out-of-date

01:05collapsing equipment and that's not good for staff it's really bad for staff morale so

01:09it's also really important to support our staff they do a really difficult job.

01:13Last week we were able to support the pay review bodies and reward those staff in line with the

01:18recommendations. We're really pleased to have been able to find the money in the health service budget

01:23to do that they deserve to be paid properly but they also deserve working conditions to be able to

01:30treat us to the standards that they want to do so that was our commitment to staff and patients and we're

01:35delivering it.

01:40you

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