“The Whidbey General Hospital Board of Directors approved the purchase of new mammography equipment for the hospital’s Southend facility in Clinton, opposite Ken’s Korner.That will save a lot of time and travel for about 75 South Whidbey women each month who have had to travel to Coupeville or Oak Harbor ever since the old Southend system broke down.The new equipment, which is used for breast cancer screening, should be up and running in about a month, said Ed Wertz, diagnostic imaging manager for the hospital, at last week’s hospital board meeting.The old system had been working in South Whidbey for about eight years and had become obsolete, Wertz said. He said the company that made it had gone out of business so when it finally broke down, there was no way to get parts to repair it.According to Wertz, the newly approved equipment will either go directly to South Whidbey or will go to the hospital’s North Whidbey clinic which will then send its current system south. Either way, he said, the system going into South Whidbey will be much better using a high density grid that will produce better film images.Mammography uses low-dosage X-rays to spot breast tumors before they can be felt. Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer in women and strikes one out of every nine American women during their lifetime. It’s estimated that as many as 90 percent of all diagnosed patients can be cured with early detection and treatment. “