Our Government is to embark on two new "drives" - banning cigarette vending machines, and putting severe restrictions on the use of sun-beds.
The reason is very simple. According to Professor Karol Sikora, a leading cancer expert, "We now spend more per person on cancer than any other European country". The problem is that we are way down the cancer league tables - 16 European countries have better rates of survival, in terms of the percentage of people who survive for more than 5 years after first diagnosis, and we are better only than Ireland, Poland, Czech Republic and Slovenia. Between the best for men at 59%, in Iceland, Italy and Sweden and the worst at 51% in Poland, Czech Rep. and Slovenia, we come in at 53%. For women Iceland is best at 48%, while Slovenia and Czech Rep are worst at 38%, while our rate is 42%.
Professor Sikora identifies 4 reasons why our high spending produces such relatively poor rates of survival:
We are bottom of the league tables on access to diagnostics, time to first treatment, availability of radiotherapy and access to innovative drugs. He adds, "We have funded managers to deal with targets while in France, Germany and Italy that bureaucracy does not exist."
Shortage of staff and equipment mean that 4 million patients wait more than a month for the tumour shrinking treatment, even though delay often reduces chances of survival significantly.
The Government is right to be concerned about the growth of malignant melanoma, - our fastest rising form of cancer, due to excessive tanning. Relatively little progress is being made in the treatment of lung cancer, so prevention by renouncing smoking is very worthwhile.
But if we could achieve the best European practice levels we would save 95 lives each day. NICE, the government drug monitoring agency, must speed up the time it takes to approve drugs. Staff must be appointed and trained to reduce waiting times, and the necessary equipment must be provided. Much of this could be achieved if we reduced the spending on bureaucratic control and targets.
Then after nearly 10 wasted years, and spending vast sums, we could see improvement in cancer expectations.
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2 comments:
We've been worried for some time - how come when we spend so much are the incomes so disappointing. Cancer looks like an example where we have pumped in money (highest per head in Europe - is that the case?) and still have among the worst outcomes.
If ther good professor is right, we just have not got our act together.
- another sign that money without reform produces disappointment. But Brown and company will never learn. They are still wasting millions!
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