Swansea is to get the first teenage cancer centre in Wales – thanks largely to a South Wales Evening Post campaign.

Readers’ response to the Post’s appeal for cash to build a cancer care centre at Singleton Hospital was so great that a mystery benefactor weighed in with £500,000. That persuaded the Teenage Cancer Trust to include a state-of-the-art centre for young patients in the new development.

“We always knew that the people of South Wales were generous but we are just overwhelmed,” said assistant editor Cathy Duncan.

Work on the Evening Post Cancer Centre is under way and the first phase should open late next month. The cash came from a fund launched by the paper in the autumn of 1998. Its target – £500,000 by the start of this year – was smashed last November and the fund now stands at £679,000.

“There’s so much money still coming in that we have extended the appeal to March 31,” said Ms Duncan (37).

“Since Christmas, we’ve had another £79,000.”

The icing on the cake was a £500,000 donation by a Camarthen woman, who insisted on anonymity, to the Teenage Cancer Trust. The charity announced it was to spend the cash on a centre unique in Britain. It will be specially designed and decorated with teenagers in mind and will include music, TV, video and games.

Swansea NHS Trust chief executive David Williams said: “I am sure we would not have had this approach if there had not been the marvellous fund-raising effort by the people of South West Wales for the cancer centre.”

From the launch of the campaign until the end of last year, the Post carried stories about response to the appeal every day on Page 4 and plucked out milestones for front-page coverage. It also published a stand-alone supplement.

“Even now, hardly a day goes by without something going in about the cancer appeal,” said Ms Duncan.

“We’ve had people raising huge sums of money off their own bat and we’ve had little old ladies Sellotaping pound coins on to pieces of paper and putting ‘in memory of a dear sister – anonymous’.

“It really has been very moving.”

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