At Wellington Regional Hospital, a $6 million machine now bends radiation to within a millimetre of its target — a quiet marvel of engineering placed in the service of human survival. The installation marks a genuine advance, yet it arrives against a backdrop of chronic underinvestment that leaves one in three New Zealand cancer patients without access to a therapy that could help them. Across a country where the number of diagnoses has outpaced the number of treatment centres for a decade, a single new machine is both a cause for relief and a measure of distance still to travel.
Wellington Hospital installs $6m radiation therapy machine as NZ expands cancer treatment capacity
Hundreds of cancer patients nationwide are missing out on radiation therapy that could treat their disease or relieve pain due to insufficient machines and staffing.