RADIUM TRUST

Evening Post, Volume CIX, Issue 122, 26 May 1930, Page 10

RADIUM TRUST

WORK OF COMMISSION

CENTRES IN BRITAIN

(From "The Post's" Representative.) LONDON, 4th April,

In a statement issued by the National Radium Commission it is announced that approximately 17 grammes, out of a possiblo total of about 22, have been ordered by the National Trust. They have been provisionally allocated to national centres.

Of this quantity nine grammes have already been received from the manufacturers. After having been tested at the National Physical Laboratory 6J have been actually delivered to centres. A further 3J will be going out very shortly.' , ■

Progress has been made with the policy of concentrating national radium at a limited number of/ centres in England, Scotland, and Wales. Of these centres twelve have already been nominated, and will be recognised as "National Radium Centres" as soon as they have complied with the requirements of the Commission. Four centres have completed their organisation and have been supplied with radium—Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, and Aberdeen; three other centres, Manchester, Glasgow, and Newcastle, will receive "their radium almost immediately. The remainder will' be recognised and supplied as soon as tho necessary preliminaries have been, completed. POSITION IN LONDON. London has been treated as a separate and special problem. Hero no centre of the normal type is .being set up, but steps have been taken to organise two centres to carry out special work of general and national importance. One of these, the Westminster Hospital, has been experimenting, on behalf of the Commission, for several months past, with a "bomb" (containing four grammes), in order to determine tho value of mass-irradiation and long distance radium therapy. Tho other London centre, which is being organised, is for the development of post-graduate teaching in radiunj therapy—a prime and urgent need, Tho facilities which will be providedi will be available for the benefit o/t qualified medical practitioners fro* a any part of Great Britain. Thus centre will be located at tho Kadiii m. Institute and tho Mount Vernon Hospital (Northwood). These institutions are being reorganised as a joint tea ching centre, styled the "Mount Vei'non. and Kadiuni Institute." Thb treatment of patients, by radium or flther means, will be greatly facilitated i by the. new scheme, in view of the. increased amount of radium avail/xble.

Another feature of the Commit sum's policy has been the preparation of a set of "Radium National Form/ i" for the use of centres, in order th/it 'the clinical records of all eases treat ,ed may bo kept on a uniform basis and eventually incorporated in general national statistics.