Cancer survivor supports centre expansion promises to cut down travel for treatment
Posted October 7, 2020 4:45 pm.
Last Updated October 7, 2020 5:02 pm.
KAMLOOPS (NEWS 1130) — Campaign promises to make cancer treatment more accessible outside the Lower Mainland are being welcomed by a survivor who wishes this had been done years ago.
Dale Bass is a Kamloops city councillor who was forced to travel to Kelowna for daily radiation to treat her breast cancer.
“It’s stressful. The whole thing is stressful and you’re away from home,” she says. “You’re away from what your comforts, and boy, you need those too when you’re going through cancer treatment. You don’t need any more stress than you already have.”
RELATED: BC NDP pitches 10-year cancer plan, Liberals promise safer communities
Both the BC NDP and BC Liberals pledge they will expand existing cancer services.
The NDP promise to open centres in Nanaimo and Kamloops within ten years, while the BC Liberals plan to invest $5 million to expand services at the Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops.
Bass wants to see a new centre in Kamloops go forward, but she hopes the campaign promises from both parties are fulfilled.
“There are so many places around here where they don’t have access to free transportation to get there and they’re still having to make those trips, so if their trip is even shorter, Merritt could easily. You could do it and go home the same day. It would benefit the entire Kamloops region if they would just do it.”
However, the city councillor — who is now 65 — remembers when past promises to build a clinic in Kamloops were broken.
“I’m cautiously optimistic that both sides will start to pay more attention to the region, to the Interior and to the North and not just focus absolutely everything down on the coast.”
