Cancer: Diagnosis

Department of Health and Social Care written question – answered at on 22 January 2018.

Alert me about debates like this

Photo of Jim Shannon Jim Shannon Shadow DUP Spokesperson (Human Rights), Shadow DUP Spokesperson (Health)

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to improve the rate of early diagnosis of cancer.

Photo of Steve Brine Steve Brine The Parliamentary Under-Secretary for Health and Social Care

To raise awareness of cancer symptoms and encourage people with symptoms to go to their doctor without delay, we have run 13 national Be Clear on Cancer awareness campaigns since 2010/11. A national respiratory symptoms campaign ran from April to the end of August 2017, focusing on the symptoms of a persistent cough and inappropriate breathlessness. The campaign covered lung cancer along with other conditions such as heart disease and lung disease.

Public Health England has developed a pilot on the abdominal symptoms which can be a sign of a number of cancers. This ran in the East and West Midlands in February and March 2017. Working in partnership with Be Clear on Cancer, Cancer Research UK has piloted a campaign in the North West on increasing uptake of bowel cancer screening in January and March 2017.

Bowel scope screening has been rolled out to 98% of centres in England and over 300,000 55 year-olds have been screened so far.

As recommended by the UK National Screening Committee and the independent Cancer Taskforce, we are modernising our world renowned cancer screening programmes by introducing Faecal Immunochemical Testing into the NHS Bowel Cancer Screening Programme during 2018/19 and human papillomavirus as the primary test in the NHS Cervical Screening Programme by December 2019.

NHS England’s Accelerate, Co-ordinate, Evaluate (ACE) programme is testing innovative ways of diagnosing cancer earlier, with ACE Wave 2 piloting multi-disciplinary diagnostic centres for patients with vague or non-specific symptoms. The pilots are taking place in London, Greater Manchester, Leeds, Bristol, Oxfordshire and Airedale, Wharfedale and Craven (Yorkshire).

The National Institute for Health Care and Excellence updated referral guidelines for suspected cancer published in June 2015 could save about 5,000 lives a year with general practitioners urged to think of cancer sooner and lower the referral threshold for tests.

Does this answer the above question?

Yes0 people think so

No0 people think not

Would you like to ask a question like this yourself? Use our Freedom of Information site.