Children with skull and brain cancer will no longer have to be treated in America after a London hospital secured £125 million for the world’s most advanced form of radiotherapy.
A new centre is to be built at UCLH that will bring proton beam therapy to the UK. It targets cancers more precisely and reduces side-effects.
Ed Anderton, whose son Lennie was flown to Florida for treatment aged 10 months after being blinded by skull cancer, said: “It would be wonderful to see families in a similar situation to us being able to get the same treatment here and not having to leave the country for three months like we did.”
Mr Anderton, from Tottenham, said Lennie, now two, mother Katherine and sister Zoe, five, were “sucked into a different world” after his son’s Ewing’s sarcoma of the skull was diagnosed in February last year. The Department of Health today confirmed UCLH and The Christie hospital in Manchester had won Treasury approval for £250 million to be spent on proton beam therapy units that will open in 2018.
Sir Robert Naylor, UCLH chief executive, commented: “This development means a life-changing difference for thousands of patients, particularly children and teenagers.
“This will see the NHS becoming a world-leader in paediatric radiotherapy, and gaining an international profile in many complex adult cancers.”
