{"id":28625,"date":"2023-02-06T09:57:19","date_gmt":"2023-02-06T09:57:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.cancerresearchuk.org\/?p=25301"},"modified":"2024-11-03T15:12:52","modified_gmt":"2024-11-03T15:12:52","slug":"the-major-conditions-strategy-will-ministers-fail-to-give-cancer-the-due-care-and-attention-it-requires","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/the-major-conditions-strategy-will-ministers-fail-to-give-cancer-the-due-care-and-attention-it-requires\/","title":{"rendered":"The \u2018major conditions strategy\u2019: will ministers fail to give cancer the due care and attention it requires?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"MichelleMichelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK<\/p>

” data-image-caption=”<\/p>

Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK<\/p>

” data-medium-file=”https:\/\/news.cancerresearchuk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Michelle-Mitchell_CEO_CRUK-300×168.jpg” data-large-file=”https:\/\/news.cancerresearchuk.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/07\/Michelle-Mitchell_CEO_CRUK.jpg”><\/p>

Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Saturday was World Cancer Day<\/a>, for which the theme was \u2018closing the gap in cancer care<\/a>\u2019 \u2013 a topic that is sadly, only too relevant to the UK. The 2022 parliamentary inquiry into cancer care has shown that England (and the UK as whole) continues to lag behind comparable nations in terms of cancer outcomes.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Government targets on cancer have been missed for years \u2013 well before the Covid pandemic. As of November 2022 \u2013 only 61% of patients in England started treatment within 62 days of an urgent suspected cancer referral. The government target of 85% has not been met since 2015. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

And around 12.4% of cancer patients in England (about 2000 people) waited more than 104 days after an urgent referral to begin treatment. This of course has a negative impact on rates of survival. It has a human impact too \u2013 with more people suffering from stress and anxiety about when they\u2019ll be treated. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Until recently, the government was committed to publishing a 10-year cancer plan in response to this crisis and had consulted with a wide range of stakeholder groups including expert oncologists and charities like Cancer Research UK. We were hopeful that the problem might be gripped once and for all.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

This plan, however, has been quietly dropped by the new administration, in favour of a 5-year \u2018major conditions strategy\u2019 which will combine their intended approach to cancer, alongside other issues such as stroke, diabetes, mental health and dementia.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Getting this strategy right will be critical to ensure cancer isn\u2019t ignored at the expense of other problems facing the NHS, such as the huge pressures on A&E and the significant backlog for elective surgery. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

The strategy will need to address the persistent failure to hit cancer targets \u2013 with clear metrics for progress and success, with clarity on who is accountable for delivery and performance, and ideally independent oversight of that performance.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

It will need to ensure the NHS rolls out better ways of diagnosing more cancers early and increases its <\/span>capacity<\/span> to get patients diagnosed and treated more quickly.<\/span> It will need to drive action on preventing cancer in the first place \u2013 ensuring government reaches its targets on problems such as smoking and obesity<\/span>.<\/span><\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

The concern, however, and the concern of many others working in cancer research and care, is that by bundling in cancer alongside other conditions via a short-term strategy \u2013 ministers will fail to give cancer the due care and attention it requires. <\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Cancer isn\u2019t a single disease, it\u2019s an umbrella term for hundreds of diseases, all of which mutate and change over time and every patient is unique. This makes treating cancer extremely complicated \u2013 in medicine it\u2019s one of the hardest problems to solve and scientific discovery takes time.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Ultimately, beating cancer requires a long-term approach. Research by Cancer Research UK has shown that the number of people in the UK diagnosed with cancer will rise by a third by 2040, taking the number of new cases every year to over half a million for the first time.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

We need to get ahead of this problem \u2013 with a long-term cancer plan that will increase capacity across community-based sites and within hospitals. It takes 15 years to train an oncologist, pathologist, radiologist or surgeon, and international comparisons<\/a> show that the countries with the biggest improvements in cancer survival<\/span><\/span>, like Denmark, are those with long-term, adequately funded cancer plans.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

The devolved assemblies have recognised this \u2013 Wales and Northern Ireland have their own cancer strategies, and Scotland is due to publish theirs shortly, leaving England as an outlier. Given we\u2019re already lagging towards the bottom of the league tables, I fear that moving away from the 10-year plan, risks England (and the UK more widely) slipping further behind.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

1 in 2 people will get cancer in their lifetime and it will affect every family across the UK. People affected by cancer feel frustrated, upset and let down. I urge government to commit to taking action for everyone affected by cancer today, tomorrow and in the future. And do so now.<\/span> <\/span><\/p>\n

Michelle Mitchell is chief executive officer of Cancer Research UK<\/em><\/p>\n

More on this topic<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

Source<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UK Michelle Mitchell, chief executive of Cancer Research UKSaturday was World Cancer Day, for which the theme was \u2018closing the gap in cancer care\u2019 \u2013 a topic that is sadly, only too relevant to the UK. The 2022 parliamentary inquiry into cancer care has shown that England (and [...]","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5137],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28625","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28625","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28625"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28625\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43069,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28625\/revisions\/43069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28625"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28625"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ogkologos.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28625"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}