PLANETS – Case Study

PLANETS Cancer Charity is dedicated to serving the needs of a population which extends from Lyme Regis to Bognor Regis and provides specialist cancer services to the 4 million people who live across Hampshire, Wiltshire, Dorset, the Isle of Wight, the Channel Islands and West Sussex.

 

The teams they support at University Hospital Southampton will see over 1000 new patients across the region each year and between the different multidisciplinary teams there will be approximately 5000 patients under follow-up, all of whom will have access to the treatment options and support services that the PLANETS Charity fund.

 

PLANETS is more than just another local cancer charity, it is a motivating and unifying force that is changing the way that we approach the fight against cancer across the central south coast of England.  In the current, cost cutting NHS environment, research and innovation are in danger of being side-lined. The PLANETS team aim to ensure that the patients in the region still have access to the very best available care, judged by international standards.

 

Their greatest achievement to date is providing the funding for a ‘Mobetron’ machine, which delivers IORT (Intra Operative Radiotherapy).

 

It’s the first portable system in the world able to administer the treatment mid-surgery.  IORT is an intensive form of targeted radiation given at the time of surgery to treat a wide variety of advanced cancers that are otherwise difficult to remove and treat, such as during pancreatic head cancer surgery, a procedure known as pancreaticoduodenectomy or Whipple procedure.  IORT enables surgeons and oncologists to give doses of radiation to areas that are at a high risk of recurrence of disease without causing damage to surrounding healthy tissue and organs.  This effectively limits radiation doses to protect surrounding critical structures, potentially reducing late complications related to treatment.

 

In order to continue to offer the amazing benefits of this wonderful machine and the vital one-to-one support to patients, PLANETS (like many other charities) is constantly in a state of fund-raising. To increase the profile of PLANETS during public-facing fundraising events, the team really want staff and volunteers to be instantly recognisable in branded PLANETS Hoodies but unfortunately these are not cheap and purchasing any quantity of them would divert cash away from other core activities.

 

At Wishing Others Well, we were able to match PLANETS with a donor who would fund the purchase of an initial stock of branded clothing and also with GazKaz, a Newbury-based promotional clothing company who offered their services at a much-reduced rate to deliver ‘more bang for our buck’!

 

Layla Stephen explained what this would mean to PLANETS. “This is a wonderful donation from Wishing Others Well and GazKaz, which really helps us out as a small Charity. We simply can’t wait to get the hoodies out to our volunteers and staff now to ‘show them off’ at the next events we are holding. Our clinical team will also get a few of them to help them feel part of the PLANETS family and most importantly to promote awareness and spread the PLANETS word – Thank you Wishing Others Well!”