CANCER services have been boosted with the opening of a much bigger and improved breast screening unit at the Kent and Canterbury Hospital.

The new £1.2 million two-storey building is now double the size of the former department and will allow specialists to cope with increases in demand expected under the Government's NHS Cancer Plan.

By 2004 screening will be given to women aged up to 70 instead of the present upper age limit of 64. In East Kent the numbers of women seen is expected to rise by 93 per cent by 2016.

Julietta Patnick, the director of national cancer screening services, officially opened the new unit. She said staff would need all its extra space to cope with the predicted expansion.

Professor Stuart Field, programme director of the Kent breast screening service, said the opening marked a very important day for cancer services in East Kent.

* The Kent breast screening service was set up in 1989 and from the start has been managed from the K&C site. There are also stand alone units in Maidstone and Medway.