Cancer care centre agreed for region

PATIENTS and families across the region this week welcomed news that a Maggie’s Cancer Care Centre is set to finally open in Dumfries.

After several years of talks, a site has been agreed in the grounds of the infirmary with a construction timescale of “the coming years”.

Once complete, it will offer free emotional, practical, and social advice and support, with sessions featuring psychologists and benefits advisors, for the 1200 people who are diagnosed locally every year.

NHS Dumfries and Galloway on Tuesday revealed they had the ‘green light’ to plan the centre, which will be funded by the Maggie’s charity.

Chief executive Julie White is delighted it’s going ahead and said: “We know the support that this approach can bring, and conversations have been focused on ensuring it benefits people across our region.

“Although the centre will be constructed in Dumfries, Maggie’s appreciate that we are a remote and rural area and are supportive of an approach serving the region in its entirety.

“NHS Dumfries and Galloway is facing significant financial challenges, but this new Maggie’s centre is set to be taken forward by the charity – with the NHS Board providing the land where it will be constructed over the coming years.”

Meanwhile, Maggie’s chief executive Dame Laura Lee DBE is pleased to be moving forward with plans to bring their professional programme of support to the home of their founder, Maggie Keswick Jencks, above.

She said: “This centre has been in development with the NHS Dumfries and Galloway for a long time, so it is wonderful to now be able to look forward to a time when people living with cancer, as well as family and friends, many of whom currently visit centres in Glasgow and Edinburgh for support, have our expert support closer to them.

“We also know that there’s something special about having a centre here because we know how fondly our founder Maggie Keswick Jencks is remembered in her home town of Dumfries.”

Maggie was a writer, gardener and designer from Holywood, who developed breast cancer age 47. It returned five years later and she died in 1995.

However, with her husband, Charles Jencks, a renowned cultural theorist, landscape designer, and architectural historian, she designed ‘somewhere better’ for people with cancer to go, outside of but near to hospitals. The first Maggie’s opened in Edinburgh in 1996.

Welcoming the ‘truly fantastic’ news, Finlay Carson MSP said: “I have been a strong advocate for bringing Maggie’s to our region, and I am delighted that this vision is now becoming a reality.

“Maggie’s centres are renowned for their holistic approach to cancer care, and having one here will make a profound difference to the lives of so many local people.”