The BC Cancer Agency Centre for the North is expected to open for business sometime late in 2012.
While the new Prince George facility will help localize the treatment facilities for cancer sufferers living in northern B.C., it won't entirely eliminate the need for people to travel to existing clinics in Kelowna or Vancouver. Not until the city gets its own PET-CT scanner.
Dr. Suresh Katakkar says that piece of equipment is an essential diagnostic tool in his job as an oncologist at UHNBC and he will continue to have to send his patients south for the scans they need.
"If this is a cancer centre for the north, we need a PET scanner to maintain that first-rate service," said Kattakkar, a regional medical leader in hematology and oncology for the BC Cancer Agency. "We need to have something state of the art, and we are getting state-of-the-art equipment, so we should have everything from the beginning. We need people to make the right decisions when they are building a nice facility, and this is one of the important links to maintain that first-rate service."
The Prince George cancer clinic will serve close to 400,000 people and Katakkar says it should provide the same services available in more heavily-populated areas in the province. Without a PET-CT scanner, his patients face long wait lists and will continue to have to travel to the Cancer Control Agency of B.C. clinic in Vancouver or, if the scan request is denied, to a private clinic in Kelowna.
"What they have to realize is this cancer centre is going to serve the whole north and all those people who are in Fort St. John and Mackenzie or further up there, they shouldn't have to drive all the way down for a PET scan," Katakkar said.
"The PET-CT scan is going to enhance the ability of radiation doctors to treat with radiation, it's going to enhance patients with lung cancer so we tell whether they operable or not and we can save all those trips to Kelowna. It's going to be a major help in management of the patient."
Katakkar believes a PET-CT scanner would also put Prince George on the map in the eyes of the medical community and help attract doctors to the area.
"New and younger physicians would come there," he said. "They would like to come to a facility that has everything and they could use all those things."
