A HEALTH chief has vowed to fight to secure the best cancer care for thousands more patients on their doorstep.

Worcester is set to get one linear accelerator for radiotherapy treatment but hospital chief John Rostill wants two machines so thousands more patients can get life-saving treatment in Worcester instead of Cheltenham.

Mr Rostill, chief executive of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust, which runs the the county's main hospitals, said: “I will fight for this – we are determined, passionately determined to reduce the amount of travel that patients in a very sick state have to undertake.”

Plans at the moment involve building one satellite unit at Worcester and one at Hereford – each with a single linear accelerator (LINAC), a machine which uses radiation to attack cancer cells.

Presently, cancer patients have to make exhausting trips to Cheltenham.

But closer links with the Arden Cancer Network, now under negotiation, may mean an extra LINAC in Worcester in future.

Mr Rostill said he will fight to have two LINACs based in Worcester and three bunkers to house the new equipment.

He added “We will certainly have two bunkers if not three” when he addressed a trust board meeting at Kidderminster Hospital.

One of the three bunkers would be a spare so that if one of the machines reaches the end of its life after around 10 years, a new one can be put in the spare bunker.

This means two machines can operate continuously without the acute trust having to reduce the number of patients receiving radiotherapy.

An extra machine would mean thousands more cancer patients could be treated in the county.

The bunkers cost around £1 million to build and the LINACs themselves are also around £1 million each.

The acute trust could not say how the money would be raised to pay for the LINACs.

The capital costs of the machine are covered by the acute trust and the running costs by Worcestershire Primary Care Trust although the 3CCN said central Government grants may be available.

The Three Counties Cancer Network which will manage the new centre in Worcester when it opens some time in either 2010 or 2011.

The plan at the moment is to build Worcester’s satellite unit at the postgraduate centre at Worcestershire Royal Hospital or possibly in a new wing.

Clive Walsh, the trust’s director of operations, said the trust was committed to providing radiotherapy for patients across Worcestershire, not just in the south of the county where the new satellite radiotherapy unit will be.