The Great Yarmouth and Waveney breast screening team with the new state of the art mobile van

A new mobile breast-screening unit for Great Yarmouth and Waveney starts its rounds this week.

The specialist Breast Imaging team based at the James Paget University Hospital in Gorleston hope to reach more people with the regio’s brand new screening van which start seeing patients in Halesworth this Friday.

The mobile unit, which will also visit Great Yarmouth, Lowestoft and Beccles, is bigger and designed to be more comfortable for women undergoing screening checks than the previous van which was in service for nearly 15 years.

It has been purchased following an investment of £140,000 from NHS Great Yarmouth and Waveney CCG.

Barbara McCaffrey, head of the Breast Imaging team, said: “It is a major improvement on the old one and will give our patients much improved comfort, privacy, dignity, and security.”

The unit has a small kitchen, air-conditioning, and hydraulic leveling that will help if the unit has to be parked on rough ground.

It offers free breast screening for all women aged 50 and over, part of the NHS Breast Screening Programme.

Screening, which aims to detect cancer at the early stages, involves a mammogram, an x-ray that can detect small changes in breast tissue which may indicate cancers which are too small to be felt either by the woman herself or by a doctor.