Pink Ladies praised for vital campaigning work

Sinn Fein MEP, Martina Anderson, said she has been working in tandem with the group to raise the issues that matter to cancer patients locally at European level.

She was speaking at a recent event hosted by the Pink Ladies at the City Hotel to mark World Cancer Day.

Ms. Anderson, who has taken the Pink Ladies to the Assembly and to the EU headquarters, paid tribute to their work at the helm of the campaign to secure the North West Cancer Centre.

At European level, Ms. Anderson has brought concerns over the soaring price of medicines to the door of Competitions Commissioner Margrethe Vestager, and is currently lobbying for regulation. “During my term as an MEP, there has been a massive increase in the cost of drugs. We can’t have patients survival rates being what we need them to be and also rehabilitation if we are going to have global pharmaceutical companies just bogging their arm into the public purse.”

Ms. Anderson said she had grave concerns over the impact Brexit could have on the future of vital EU funding for medical research being undertaken here; the impact of new immigration rules will have on staffing the NHS and the impact a hard border will have on access to cancer services.

“The only way we were able to secure the Radiotherapy Unit at Altnagelvin was because we were able to do a critical mass of the north west, including Donegal. If that is taken out of the geographical area we can argue for, then it would have been harder to secure that.”