THE NHS deficit, staff cuts and the UK’s vote to leave the EU have led to a system washed with uncertainty, but amid the chaos are the patients.

In a time of financial strain, the real cost of prostate cancer is human life – and it is the tireless work of organisations like The Lynda Jackson Macmillan Centre who are providing emotional support to help patients through difficult times.

The Macmillan centre in Northwood is open to anyone who has questions about cancer and they run monthly support groups for patients.

Buzz Coster, marketing manager at the Northwood centre, said: “Patients can support each other and share their experiences together because there is nothing like hearing it from someone who has been there. People just want to talk.

“This applies less to men, men don’t always find it as easy to open up and chat like women do, but if they just want to talk, we know that it’s so hard to talk with our nearest and dearest.

“It’s not always easy for them to talk to each other about things, so we provide that independent, third party listening ear to somebody who just wants to talk about what they’re going through.”

With figures from The King’s Fund revealing the NHS will record a deficit of £2.45 billion for 2015/16, the heavy financial strain that grapples the NHS has led to much worry about its impact on cancer treatment.

Peter Gibson, associate director of public affairs at East and North Hertfordshire NHS Trust, said the standard of service was unaffected by finance, with a diagnosis of prostate cancer being made within 31 days and treatment in most cases starting within 62 days.

Mr Gibson said: “If a patient is diagnosed with prostate cancer, they will be treated with prostate cancer, finances don’t come into it.

“What we might be struggling with is obviously volumes of patients, but with the volumes of patients we get, we are paid to do that work.

“So as long as we’re covering our costs, then everything is fine, and there is no suggestion that patients are going to be somehow prevented from accessing treatment.”

Named after Lynda Jackson, a 31-year-old patient who died at Mount Vernon Hospital, The Lynda Jackson Macmillan Centre opened in 1993 and has since helped patients through their illness.

Mrs Coster said: “What keeps us motivated is it is an incredible place to work.

“We know the stresses and strains that people are going through having treatment or supporting their husbands, wives, friends, partners through treatment, and to be able to continue to do that is an incredibly motivating reason to get out of bed in the morning.

“To be able to offer these sorts of services to people is amazing and we’re the first centre of our kind.

“A lot of what we do is probably considered quite mainstream now, but 23 years ago it wasn’t, so the whole concept of supporting people through cancer is very different.

“The other things that are important to recognise is more and more people are being successfully treated or if not successfully treated they can live with their cancer and have a decent quality of life for much longer.

“We offer self-help courses to help get them back because obviously, they’ve got the rest of their lives ahead of them and we want them to get the most out of it.

“Fortunately, it’s not a taboo subject anymore, and I think that’s really helped everybody, and it means that coming in asking for help in a centre like ours isn’t considered a weakness like years ago it might have been.”