Duchess of Cornwall to visit Milton Keynes next week

The Duchess of Cornwall is to pay a visit to a charity just outside Milton Keynes.

Camilla Parker-Bowles is patron of Medical Detection Dogs and she will visit the charity's new training centre in Great Horwood on Wednesday February 20.

The centre houses the Puppy Socialising department, which ensures that the charity has enough dogs to train as future assistance dogs and bio-detection dogs.

It also includes space for the Medical Alert Assistance Dog team, who support applicants through the process of

matching them with a dog, and the instructors who train the dogs to save lives.

The Duchess will tour the centre and will meet with the charity’s volunteers before viewing a short demonstration in the Dogs-In-Training area.

Her Royal Highness will also visit the client training area and meet with some of the charity’s clients and their

dogs.

The Duchess’ tour will conclude with a viewing of an example training session in the Puppy Socialising area.

Her Royal Highness will cut a ribbon to open the centre with the assistance of Tala, one of the dogs-in-training,

Medical Detection Dogs was co-founded in 2008 by Dr Claire Guest, a behavioural psychologist, and Dr John Church, a former orthopaedic surgeon.

Both Dr. Guest and Dr. Church believed that the extraordinary smelling power of dogs could be used to

detect the odour of human cancer and other diseases.

The charity now trains specialist dogs to detect many human diseases, including cancer, Parkinson’s disease and malaria.

Medical Detection Dogs work with other researchers, NHS Trusts and universities internationally to advance the early diagnosis of disease.

In training trials, the dogs have proved to be 93 percent reliable, significantly higher than many existing tests.

The charity also provides life-saving Medical Alert Assistance Dogs to people with complex health problems such as Type 1 diabetes, PoTS and Addison’s disease across the UK.

The Duchess of Cornwall has been the charity’s Patron since 2014.