12:00pm Thursday 4th February 2010
By Jim Durkin
A CENTRE providing a lifeline for cancer patients and their families has celebrated its first birthday.
Volunteers at Poole’s About Face Centre work with patients diagnosed with facial and neck cancers.
Funded entirely by charitable donations, it is also striving to establish itself as a training base for surgeons from across the region.
Consultant surgeon Velupillai Ilankovan, who met patients and staff during the first birthday celebrations, co-formed the About Face charity over a decade ago to provide one-to-one counselling for newly-diagnosed patients.
He stressed: “Support for cancer patients is very important. This centre is here to support these patients, their families and our doctors and nurses.”
The house, with a conference room, microscope lab, kitchens, an office and communal areas, opened on Longfleet Road one year ago, following the Daily Echo-backed Butterfly Appeal.
It costs £80,000 a year to maintain.
Trustee Ian Catley, who successfully led the appeal to establish the centre, said: “Having a centre, a place where we can focus on all the issues, has proved what we suspected it would for a number of years – it has made it easier for patients who are newly diagnosed to seek the help they need.”
It’s run by volunteers who have suffered from cancer. Some have not long recovered from complex surgery themselves.
The centre hosts a weekly drop-in clinic, and in December 2009 it held its first microsurgical hands-on course for trainee surgeons.
Mr Catley said: “We hope after a year we’ve made a good start, but there is lots more to do.
“We are a tiny charity and will always need people’s support, but I believe About Face does a most effective job for people who have cancer of the face and neck.”
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