As a member of the Community Health Council Project Team, I undertook the journey from my home in East Saltdean to the Princess Royal Hospital in Haywards Heath in order to ascertain the feasibility of travelling to that venue as an alternative to receiving treatment in Brighton.

With careful planning and being relatively fit - that is, being able to sprint on and off four buses and two trains - the journey took more than four hours.

Add to that any treatment and one is talking about up to seven or eight hours for an appointment, bearing in mind perhaps missing vital links in the journey.

Put into the equation being a young mother with a toddler and buggy, the cost of the journey - at least £8 - and the wear and tear on an anxious and unwell human being and you have an unsustainable situation.

At a meeting with the health authority, I was advised that outpatients' appointments would take place locally but I have yet to be assured this will be the case.

And are consultants happy to be peripatetic? It also raises the question of patients' notes, X-rays and biopsy results.

Perhaps someone from the health authority or Brighton Health Care NHS Trust can tell me if the technology is in place to transfer these details electronically.

The thought of this vital and confidential information being carried in private cars and briefcases, with all that entails in terms of lack of security, fills me with foreboding.

I am of grandmother age and have no fears for myself but I am concerned about the younger generation of women.

In my working life, I was involved with young families who had lost mothers to breast cancer and saw at first-hand the immense grief this illness can cause.

We must do all we can to ensure women have timely and accessible means of obtaining advice and treatment at the first sign of a breast lump.

This means the service must stay and be expanded in the city.

-Maureen E Lawrence RGN, Rodmell Avenue, Saltdean