Shake-up of children’s cancer care after decade long arguments and cover-up claims

London’s fragmented children’s cancer services will finally be reformed following a decade of delays and allegations of cover-up by senior officials.

NHS England has said it will adopt recommendations that will see the capital’s services brought up to standards already common across the rest of the country, with children’s cancer centres needing to be based in hospitals with full paediatric intensive care units.

The changes will be imposed “with no exceptions or special arrangements permitted,” it said in a letter yesterday.

This means the Royal Marsden’s children’s service at its base in Sutton, south London, will have to move to a new hospital. Currently sick children who deteriorate at the Marsden’s site have to be rushed by ambulance to St George’s Hospital 40 minutes away.

More than 330 children were transferred from the Marsden to other hospitals between 2000 and 2015 and in one year 22 children were transferred for intensive care a total of 31 times, with some experiencing at least three transfers individually.

The changes will also affect cancer care at University College London Hospital which links with Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital.

The world-renowned Royal Marsden trust, whose chief executive Dame Cally Palmer is also NHS England’s national cancer director, was at the centre of a cover-up scandal before the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2019, the Health Service Journal revealed a major report, commissioned by NHS bosses in London following the deaths of several children, had been “buried” by NHS England.

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Source: The Independent, 12 November 2021