Manchester’s cancer care challenge

The coronavirus pandemic has caused devastating delays for local people with cancer. The Christie will soon see a surge in patients from Manchester and across the North West.

We already have the best clinicians, the specialist treatments and the world-leading researchers we need to rise to the challenge. But we need your support, too.

This year, the challenges associated with cancer have multiplied as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic – for patients and clinicians. In the last 6 months, the number of people receiving a cancer diagnosis has fallen dramatically all over the UK, including Manchester.

This has been because people were concerned about visiting their GP or local hospital. But unfortunately, cancer doesn’t stop for COVID-19. As a result, we are expecting a huge number of new cancer cases in the weeks and months ahead. Many of the people we see will require more complex treatment due to the delay in their diagnoses.

Any support you can give us will make a really big difference to our patients. You can help make sure we can give our new patients as much hope as possible.

© Joel Goodman, 2020

Supporting patients during the COVID-19 pandemic

Throughout this crisis, our number one priority has been balancing the safety of our patients and staff with keeping our cancer services running.

Some of the changes we’ve made have been relatively straightforward. These include people have to wear masks, checking temperatures on entering the hospital and maintaining social distancing where possible.

We’ve also provided home delivery for some medicines and offered virtual appointments. But we’ve also had to make some very difficult decisions, such as asking patients to visit The Christie alone, and restricting visitors.

And as soon as lockdown eased, we jumped into action to respond to delays caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Using our cutting-edge MR-linac machine, we were able to reduce treatment time from 20 days to 5 days for some patients treated with radiotherapy.

Thanks to this hard work, we’ve been able to keep our services open. But we need more funds to support charity projects including new cutting-edge equipment and ground-breaking research trials.

Saving our patients’ lives

As a world-leading cancer centre, our clinical trials and pioneering research save lives not only in Manchester, but all over the globe.

For instance, thanks to the kind local people who support us, we were able to establish The Ella Project to research new treatments for the rare cancer Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma. You can read more about the Ella Project on our website page.

We’ve also started treating people with a revolutionary new treatment called CAR-T therapy. This helps patients’ cells target cancer directly. Patients like Mark, who was one of the first patients in the UK to have CART therapy.

Read more about Mark’s story to see why he’s so grateful to The Christie.

How you have helped – and how you can help now

Donations from our supporters allow us to go above and beyond for our patients, offering the very latest and very best cancer treatment, care and research. Among a great many other incredible achievements, support from local people is already helping to: