A PROSTATE cancer clinic is coming to St Cross later this year thanks to over £11,000 raised by last year’s Mayor, Coun Tony Gillias.
The one-stop clinic will offer checks for the disease, helping patients to get quick treatment if it is diagnosed.
A date for the opening of the new unit has not yet been announced.
But Donald Macdonald, clinical lead for urology for University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire, said: “Thanks to the donation Coun Gillias has made to UHCW Charity, and donations of the equipment needed, we should be able to open the clinic later this year.
“The unit will be designed to be supportive to the men we see. It will be a warm, welcoming and comfortable place, and of course it will help us to offer treatment as quickly as possible if prostate cancer is diagnosed.”
Coun Gillias chose to use his year in office to support local prostate cancer services after two of his friends died of the disease.
As well as fund-raising he has been trying to increase awareness of what is the most common cancer among men in the UK by urging all over the age of 50 to have a PSA blood test which indicates the health of the prostate gland.
He said: “My friends were unable to beat it and deteriorated over three to four years.
“This gradual decline in the health had such an impact on their families and close friends and feeling of helplessness by some of us.
“If they had been diagnosed just a little earlier then there could have been a totally different outcome.”
He added: “The new clinic at St Cross will most certainly get detection underway quicker, and will save lives – of that there is no doubt.
“It’s also important that men take responsibility and get checked so treatments can be given quickly.”
