New online guide to complementary and alternative cancer treatments

People with cancer now have a direct route to complementary and alternative treatments worldwide, thanks to a new online directory from UK charity Yes to Life.

The database, being developed by Yes to Life with the help of cancer specialists, allows patients to identify treatment options quickly, and acquire the confidence to make choices.

The charity was set up in honour of Bryony Daly, who contracted cancer age nine, and encourages an integrated approach to cancer care. The online directory will give sufferers and relatives instant access to a choice of complementary and alternative treatments, products and interlinked practitioners and clinics.

Web surfers can access the “LIFE” directory via www.yestolife.org.uk and search by treatment, practitioner or organisation. There are options to limit the search regionally - for example to the UK only - and to a specific type of cancer. It will produce for them a treatment summary, description and history, as well as contacts.

The directory content is being reviewed by Dr Chris Etheridge, of Cancer Options, and Dr Chris Dawkins, of Oxford’s Breakspeare Clinic.

The directory, LIFE>RESOURCES, is phase one of a three level service. Future developments will include a forum, LIFE>TALK, directly linked to directory entries, to enable patients to input their experiences, forming an information and experience bank; and lastly, a linked patient record scheme, LIFE>LINES, where practitioners and patients will log their progress for evaluation of treatments.

Under Phase Three, patients will select their own level of privacy, and surfers will be able to track their progress and make their own decisions, based on real case histories.

Among those to praise the initiative is Dr Rosy Daniel, former Medical Director of Bristol Cancer Care and Founder and Medical Director of Health Creation. She said: “This vital resource supports recent huge strides in complementary and alternative medicine which can now equip the body to fight cancer – both in its own right, and together with conventional medicine.

“Until now, cancer patients and their families have had to make their own long and laborious searches to try to find appropriate and hopeful treatments – but this simple and practical databank will, even now, help them assess many more options at a glance and – in time – enable very informed choices.

Robin Daly, founder of Yes to life, and father of Bryony, said: “This is precisely the information I and my family would love to have had when we faced our own dilemma. If we knew then what we know now, then perhaps we would have made different choices.

“At least now others might benefit in ways we could not.”

http://www.yestolife.org.uk/