UK Cancer Campaign Celebrates The "Joy Of Living"

Cancer campaign celebrates the "Joy of Living"

A new campaign to build five new Maggie's cancer care centres across England and Wales by 2012 was launched at a Downing Street reception last night.

The campaign aims to raise £15m for centres to open in Swansea, Nottingham, Newcastle, Oxford and Cheltenham to complement similar services in Scotland.

Named after their founder, Maggie Keswick Jencks, the day-care centres provide people living with cancer, and their family and friends, emotional and psychological support. Psychologists and oncology-trained professionals staff the centres to provide a variety of programmes.

Maggie, who lost her life to cancer in 1995, believed that dedicated support would help sufferers feel less isolated. Over the last decade the five exisiting Maggie's Centres, which include one in the Prime Minister's constituency of Kirkcaldy, have been visited more than 200,000 times.

The Prime Minister and Mrs Brown met with supporters and individuals that have benefited from using the centres at the reception.

They also viewed photographs of people who have used Maggie's Centres that will be exhibited on the walls of 10 Downing St until early January. The pictures, taken by Maggie's Patron Sam Taylor Wood, will then tour the UK in 2008.

ENDS

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