“No One Fights Alone”: Cancer Support Group to Gather Outside Cancer Centre this Saturday as the Group Demands Urgent Reopening

After several years of waiting, delayed reopenings and broken promises this Saturday, the people most directly affected by the prolonged closure of the Cancer Centre Eastern Caribbean will make their presence felt, taking their frustration and their pain to the very doorstep of the shuttered facility on Queen Elizabeth Highway.

Saturday’s Action

The Community Charitable Ministry (CCM) is organising a public gathering on Saturday, June 27, near the Cancer Centre on Queen Elizabeth Highway, calling for the immediate reopening of the facility that has been closed since April 2023. The action is intended to raise awareness and encourage support for restoring local cancer treatment services.

“It Is Time to Prioritise Our Health Infrastructure”

Support member of the Antigua and Barbuda Cancer Support Community, Sandra Graham Harrigan — known widely as “Teacher G” — laid out plainly why she believes Saturday’s gathering is necessary. “We all know someone who has been affected by cancer. It is a battle that no one should have to fight alone and certainly not without local accessible care,” she said. “Expecting patients to travel or deal with the stress of limited services during their most vulnerable moments is just not acceptable. It is time to prioritise our health infrastructure.”

She called on the public to amplify the message and maintain pressure on the government. “I’m asking everyone to amplify this message, support the advocacy efforts and let’s keep the pressure on until the Cancer Centre is back open and serving our community. Our lives and our well-being depend on it,” she said.

The Double Trauma of Diagnosis Without Local Care

CCM co-founder Donna Bell spoke with striking directness about what cancer patients in Antigua and Barbuda have actually been enduring since the closure. “How caring are we when after we’re first traumatised with a diagnosis, we’re then traumatised more with a stress message? Treatment not available in Antigua and Barbuda; patient needs to travel,” she said.

Bell mapped out the cascading burdens faced by patients without the means to pay. “Then hold on, for persons who cannot afford treatment, let’s traumatise further. Wait for treatment to be authorised by Medical Benefits. Wait, more trauma. To access treatment overseas, patient needs to fund the passages, accommodations and transportation for themselves and the travelling companion,” she said.

Bell also noted the bitter irony of the closure coinciding with growing awareness of the psychosocial dimension of cancer care. “How ironic is it that now that we are becoming more aware of and are learning to provide the psychosocial element of cancer care, counselling, emotional support, mental support, therapy, the Cancer Centre closes and we can no longer provide the physical, medical element of treatment,” she said. “Our families, our people need, no, they deserve affordable, holistic medical cancer treatment available at home, on our island, in our region.”

Bell delivered perhaps the most devastating verdict on the human cost of the delay: “Sadly, some having been hampered by immigration gymnastics have already lost the fight.”

What the Government Has Said — and Not Said

The public gathering comes just days after the government told the nation during a post-Cabinet media briefing that the Cancer Centre is now expected to reopen in the fall, once specialised radiation equipment is installed, staffing requirements are met, and bunkering safety works are completed. A radiation oncologist, radiation physicist, and radiation therapist have reportedly been identified for the programme.

But the government provided no specific opening date. And asked directly whether services would be covered under the Medical Benefits Scheme and what patients could expect to pay, the Director General of Communications said those matters are “still under discussion” — leaving cancer patients with neither a firm timeline nor any clarity on what accessing care will actually cost them when the doors eventually reopen.

Bell noted that while cancer patients can still access a “limited measure of care” through the Oncology Department at the Sir Lester Bird Medical Centre, the dedicated cancer treatment centre no longer exists — a critical distinction for patients requiring the kind of specialised radiation treatment the closed facility was designed to provide.

Several Years and a Pattern of Broken Deadlines

Saturday’s gathering does not arrive in a vacuum. The Cancer Centre Eastern Caribbean opened under the Honourable Dr. Winston Baldwin Spencer administration as the first of its kind in the Eastern Caribbean. Since its closure several years ago under the Gaston Browne administration, a succession of promised reopening dates — weeks, then months, then “imminent,” then end-of-year, then first half of 2026, and now “fall” — has come and gone without result. The “fall 2026” promise is the latest in a series of deadlines that have all been broken.

For the patients who have waited, the families who have stretched their finances to fund overseas treatment, and for those who have already lost the battle while the centre sat dark and silent on Queen Elizabeth Highway, Saturday’s gathering is not merely an act of advocacy. It is a statement of how much has been lost — and how much more cannot afford to wait.

CCM’s rallying message says it plainly: “No one fights alone.”