Hospital to get cancer support base

The Maggie’s centre will be set up at St James’s Hospital, Leeds, after NHS bosses gave their backing.

It will offer cancer patients and their families free emotional and practical support from a purpose-built facility, probably close to the Bexley Wing, which provides cancer care and treatment.

The Maggie’s charity is named after one of its founders, Maggie Keswick Jencks, who died in 1995.

The following year the first Maggie’s Centre opened in Edinburgh and there are now 15 centres in the UK, one in Hong Kong and an online facility.

They offer complementary therapies, practical help, information, courses and support groups and are usually separate, but close to, hospital services.

Hospital directors were told that the charity had approached the trust about establishing a Maggie’s Centre in Leeds to benefit
cancer patients.

The Robert Ogden Macmillan Centre, which is near the Thackray Museum in Leeds, already provides support services and both charities are likely to work at the hospital in future, with Macmillan likely to focus on its information and hair loss services.

Maggie’s will be granted a lease for an as-yet-undecided site at a peppercorn rent. The charity will meet all construction, maintenance and running costs.