he first breast cancer prevention centre in Europe has opened in Manchester.

The Nightingale Centre and Genesis Prevention Centre aims do provide pioneering research and treatment in a bid to fight the disease with an outpatient facility that will service 500 women per week. Every year almost 44,100 cases of breast cancer are diagnosed with 43,760 of those cases being women.

Breast cancer amounts to 30% of all female cancers here in the UK and is the most common cancer amongst women.

The chances of developing breast cancer increases with age and doubles ever ten years. However only a quarter of all the breast cancer cases are in women under the age of 50.

Half of the cases occur in women between the ages of 50 and 69 with the other quarter in women aged 70 or over.

It causes 12,500 death per year in the UK.

The £14 million centre is equipped with state of the art technology including ultra sounds and mamogram machines that can pick up breast cancer much earlier.

The new centre which has opened on the Wythenshawe Hospital Site and replaces the old Nighingale Centre.

Head of the centre Dr Mary Wilson, said: "It is a very calm, state-of-the-art environment in which to treat patients. We will be able to bring more than 120 staff, from all the different expertise, all together under one roof, to give women the best possible treatment.

"The scale of the centre also means we will be able to carry out more research, allowing women to have acess to the best new treatments first as part of clinical trials."

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