THE SNP’S Philippa Whitford has returned to the Middle East to help patients diagnosed with cancer.

Breast cancer surgeon Whitford, the SNP MP for Central Ayrshire, is spending 10 days of the Westminster recess working in Gaza City and East Jerusalem and is travelling with the organisation Medical Aid for Palestinians (MAP).

The MP first visited Palestine as a volunteer breast surgeon in the 1990s and returned to the country in a medical role last year, when she performed four major cancer operations, held clinics for patients and delivered lectures to medical students and junior doctors.

She is currently part of a multidisciplinary team of breast cancer specialists from Scotland who are in Gaza on a scoping mission and is joined by an oncologist from Inverness, a radiologist from Dundee, a breast cancer nurse from Lanarkshire, and a palliative care physician.

They are there to try and develop a quality improvement project with Medical Aid for Palestinians and local breast cancer surgeons, oncologists, radiologists and pathologists, as well as helping to develop more supportive services for women with breast cancer.

The trip follows Whitford’s visit with MAP last year, when she observed the need for vital medicines, support and training.

Writing about her experiences last year, she noted that a Harvard Medical School study had shown that five-year survival rates for breast cancer patients in Gaza were as low as 30-40 per cent compared to around 85 per cent in the UK.

Breast cancer specialists from all across Scotland have volunteered to be part of the ongoing project.

Whitford told The National some breast cancer patients in Gaza had to endure mastectomies because they could not get radiotherapy.

“Last year when I was here, I found some women having mastectomy and axillary clearance, removal of all axillary lymphnodes, not for locally advanced disease, which is common, but because they have no radiotherapy in Gaza and most patients do not get permission to travel from the strip to get radiotherapy in Augusta Victoria Hospital in East Jerusalem,” she said.

“This year, I am trying to introduce Sentinel Node Biopsy to Gaza and the West Bank by working with local surgeons.

“Sadly, what has become more clear this time is also the lack of any systematic pathway for patients to ensure all the required diagnostic tests are done without doing a lot that are unnecessary.”