Transcript:
Professor David Hill, Director, The Cancer Council Victoria:
It's interesting to note that in surveys, cancer patients report that their most important unmet need is for information. And that's why we put such a high priority on the Cancer Council Helpline.
The Cancer Council Helpline number is 13 11 20. It's there for everybody, but most importantly it's there for cancer patients and their carers. And we would like to think that cancer patients and their carers would call that number early in the course of their disease, because so often people tell us when they get around to calling, 'Gosh, I wish I'd called earlier - this would have been helpful.'
If speaking the english language is a problem for people, we do have the ability to refer people to somebody who speaks their language. People can speak to an oncology nurse - someone who works in the cancer wards part of the week and the rest of the week is on the telephone, so they're very up to date. And they're supported by a database so they can look up for a caller, for instance, whether there's a support group operating near where they live.
It puts people in touch with a whole host of services that might be of value to them. As well as information that can be sent out. But more importantly people find that just talking to someone who's so knowledgable about cancer, is a big help.
The service is completely confidential, in fact it can by anonymous - we don't ask people to give their names, although they might if we're going to send them out some printed material. There's a lot of excellent free printed material that people can receive by calling that number.
