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George Loble, MBE

My name is George Loble and I live in Newcastle upon Tyne. I was awarded the MBE in the Birthday Honours List in 2007. Mentioned in the citation was breast cancer research at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. The most important thing about any kind of cancer is early detection. So the society is actually called the Women’s Cancer Detection Society.

In the early 1960s a friend of mine, who had a department store in Gateshead, and a consultant at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital decided to do cervical smear screening, and that was then taken on by the National Health Service. So four or five years later this friend of mine decided with the aid of this consultant that they would do breast screening.

So the Breast Screening Unit at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital was the first or possibly the second in the whole country, and it was a voluntary organisation. What we did, we raised money. We bought a mammography machine, which believe it or not in those days cost £75,000 which was a lot of money, it even is today. Today you can buy one for £45,000, because it was state-of-the-art.

Dr Linsley Lunt

I'm Dr Linsley Lunt and I'm Director of the Breast Screening Unit in Gateshead. Well our screening catchment area includes 103,000 women at the moment that we screen on a three-yearly cycle. So each year we're seeing around 25,000 to 30,000 women.

Well George was already Chairman of the Women’s Cancer Detection Society when I was appointed here and so I've worked with him, with the charity over many years. He’s raised lots of money through all of the charity helpers that we have and given a great deal of equipment and also research support to the Unit.

We were the first to have this prone table biopsy system in the North East, so we were very thrilled with that donation. But there have also been things just to make life more comfortable for the ladies like tea and coffee machines, more comfortable chairs for when they're being X-rayed, an enormous range of stuff.

George Loble, MBE

The honour means to me that apart from the satisfaction which I've had over all these years to do the work, it's being recognised publicly and it may encourage other people to do similar work.