More than half a million people in England have had to wait longer than two months for essential cancer treatment, analysis of latest NHS figures has shown.
It has led experts to suggest thousands more patients will die unnecessarily unless the NHS gets to grips quickly with the delays.
Analysis of new NHS figures by Radiotherapy UK shows that in the decade to November 2024, 506,335 cancer patients in England waited more than 62 days for treatment.
International research shows that every four weeks of delay in cancer treatment increases the risk of death by up to 10%. But the NHS has not met its target for 85% of cancer patients to start treatment within 62 days since December 2015 – currently, only 69% begin treatment within the two-month target.
The Department of Health and Social Care is due to relaunch the government’s cancer plan on Tuesday, to coincide with World Cancer Day.
Some experts fear the government’s cancer plan will lack teeth and contribute to more deaths, after NHS England scrapped the target to diagnose 75% of cancers at stage 1 or 2 and the health secretary, Wes Streeting, told the Health Service Journal that the government could not commit to meeting national cancer targets by the end of this parliament.
Prof Pat Price, chair of Radiotherapy UK and a leading oncologist, said: “The last decade of leadership in cancer has normalised dangerous delays and unacceptably low ambitions. These delays will cost thousands of lives. We need a brave and bold cancer plan or even more lives will be lost needlessly in the next decade. Incremental change will fail. We need strategies to supercharge both early diagnosis and treatment.”
Source: The Guardian, 3 February 2025
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