A fashion show sponsored by Rossborough Healthcare has raised £15,000 towards equipment that will save patients travelling off-island for five weeks of daily radiotherapy treatment.

The Fashion in Bloom Garden Party, held at Abbey Restaurant in aid of the Manx Breast Cancer Support Group, was a sell out, attracting 80 women.

Gary Holdaway, manager at Rossborough Healthcare International said: ‘This was a fantastic event and one which Rossborough Healthcare is extremely proud to be associated with.

‘The charity worked very hard to pull the garden party together and managed to raise an impressive amount of money.

The Manx Breast Cancer Support Group is a charity formed by a group of volunteers who have raised £2.1m in four years, and built the Manx Breast Unit at Nobles Hospital.

The charity continues to raise money to equip it to the highest standard, recently buying a DBT 3D mammogram machine, which finds tumours when they are as small as a grain of sand.

The charity now wants to buy an intra-operative radiotherapy machine, which supplies a one-off treatment while the tumour is being removed, saving five weeks of daily radiotherapy treatments off-island.

This will enable tumours to be found while they are small and treat them quickly.

It can also be used for other forms of cancer and helps avoid the need for more aggressive and invasive treatments.

‘It was a wonderful afternoon, despite the weather, and we are thrilled that we managed to raise £15,000. Living on an island can make breast cancer treatment even more difficult, and therefore it’s so important to carry on improving the equipment we have on-island to minimise the amount of travelling patients have to do at a very tough time,’ said Julie Stokes, chairman of the Manx Breast Cancer Support Group.

‘We are extremely grateful to Rossborough Healthcare for its generous sponsorship of Fashion in Bloom – without them it wouldn’t have been the success that it was.

‘We are hoping that they will help us to make this an annual event.’