Hospital District hopes to make residents ‘part of the fight’ for Kamloops cancer centre – Kamloops News

Photo: KTW file

Kamloops-area residents are being asked to sign up to share their experience with cancer treatment as the next step in an advocacy campaign for a long-promised cancer centre at Royal Inland Hospital.

The Thompson Regional Health District has launched a website and social media channels for its Cancer Won’t Wait campaign, with more initiatives expected to be rolled out in the months leading to the provincial election this fall.

TRHD chair Mike O’Reilly told Castanet Kamloops the website has a spot to gauge public interest in providing testimonials. People can provide their name and contact information and check off whether they want to share their story about their experiences — either good or bad — with cancer treatment in the Kamloops area and in time the website will provide a spot on the site where people can upload their stories.

O’Reilly said the hospital district wants to hear from people from all over the TRHD — which has a population of about 150,000 people — about how cancer treatment has helped them as well as how the required travelling out of the Kamloops area has impacted their lives.

“That’s something we that we want the provincial government to hear — how much of a challenge it is for people to get cancer radiation treatment,” O’Reilly said.

He said other initiatives of the campaign will be announced as they are ready to be rolled out.

Campaign is under budget

The TRHD set aside $75,000 last September to launch the campaign and O’Reilly said they are still under budget and do not anticipate having to spend any additional money.

The hospital district launched the campaign in response to decades of promises for such a facility from multiple governments that have gone unfulfilled.

B.C.’s Health Minister Adrian Dix has said a business plan for the “complicated” Kamloops cancer centre is complete. Dix has yet to share details of the business plan, having said he will do so “soon.”

“When I hear words like complicated, that, to me means delays, and that’s not something that we want to see,” O’Reilly said, noting the business plan has not been shared with him to date.

Diagnositcs and chemotherapy are available for RIH patients, but area residents must travel to Kelowna to undergo radiation treatment. The TRHD estimates about 40 per cent of patients travelling to the Okanagan for that treatment live in the Thompson-Cariboo-Shuswap health service delivery area.

‘We need to keep fighting’

O’Reilly said he has heard from people directly who have forgone cancer treatment because they are not willing to put up with the hours of travel.

“We need to keep fighting for the residents of Kamloops and the regional district and also have our residents being part of the fight,” O’Reilly said.

According to the province, the Kamloops cancer centre will include three radiation treatment linear accelerators, radiation therapy planning, a CT simulator, an MRI scanner and an outpatient care unit.

A 470-stall parkade will also be constructed on the site.