Streeting considers reviving dedicated cancer strategy

Wes Streeting may revive the use of a dedicated cancer strategy to tackle the UK’s second biggest killer after experts warned the Conservatives’ scrapping of it was “a disaster” for patients.

The health secretary is considering publishing a new comprehensive plan for England, amid record numbers of people being diagnosed with the disease and NHS cancer services struggling to meet demand.

Previous Labour and Tory government published four cancer-specific action plans between 2000 and 2015 and they helped to bring about improvements in treatment, waiting times and survival.

However, in January last year Steve Barclay, then the health secretary, caused consternation among specialists in the disease and charities such as Cancer Research UK when he announced that plans to boost cancer care were being subsumed into a much wider-ranging major conditions strategy.

They warned that a disease that kills 167,000 people a year in the UK would not get the focus it merits when it was part of a document that also covered heart disease, mental illness, dementia, lung health and joint problems.

But Streeting – himself a kidney cancer survivor – is examining the case for once again publishing a specific plan that would address issues such as long waiting times for care, frontline cancer services’ lack of staff and how best to ensure patients can access emerging treatments.

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Source: The Guardian, 30 September 2024