Hospital delivers cancer care equipment to Ghana

Staff (l-r) Kim Hehir, Paula Horne and Victoria Hammond-Turner have been helping to donate equipment

A hospital has sent cancer care equipment to Ghana that would otherwise have ended up in a landfill.

The Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust has been sending immobilisation kits, including headrests and knee supports.

The trust has a 10-year relationship with radiographers at a city hospital in Kumasis.

Paula Horne, from Berkshire Cancer Centre, said: “It makes perfect sense to donate the equipment we don’t use anymore.”

Dozens of immobilisation kits have been sent to Komfo Anokye Teaching Hospital in Ghana to provide their patients with safer and more accurate cancer treatment.

Staff from the Berkshire trust previously visited the hospital and during these trips said it was clear they did not have all the equipment they needed.

Radiotherapy clinicians in Ghana have been using the items

Ms Horne, radiotherapy service manager at the Berkshire Cancer Centre, was part of the team that initially visited Ghana with the aim of improving the outcomes for people receiving cancer treatment.

She said: “We know that in the hospital in Kumasi, the dedicated staff have to make use of what they have, which is often not very much. For example improvising and creating headrests out of rolls of paper.

“It makes perfect sense to donate the equipment we don’t use anymore to them, helping to give their patients the best possible treatment they can."

Victoria Hammond-Turner, a technical and development lead therapeutic radiographer, said: “All around the world, patients with cancer are treated using radiotherapy every day.

“One very important part of that is making sure the radiation only reaches those areas we need to target. And that means keeping the patient very still."

Technician Kim Hehir said: “It’s great to know, that even from so far away, we are able to help."