The poor treatment of cancer sufferers in Britain is reflected in this article in The Sunday Times (March 25, 2007:

Delays give patients new cancers

Sarah-Kate Templeton, Health Correspondent

CANCER patients who have had tumours removed are dying because they are waiting so long for for follow-up radiotherapy that their tumours return, a government report has found.

After surgery, patients should receive radiotherapy within 28 days, according to the Royal College of Radiologists. However, in some areas, patients are waiting three times as long. In Kent, for example, the waiting time for breast cancer patients who have had tumours removed by surgery is three months.

Dr Michael Williams, vice-president of the Royal College of Radiologists and co-author of the report, said that, in addition, some patients were not receiving enough radiotherapy.

Williams said: “One problem is delays in some areas of the country and the other is that, when patients are treated, they receive fewer fractions [doses] of radiation than they would receive elsewhere in Europe and America.”

It is understood that the report, co-authored by Mike Richards, the government’s “cancer czar”, also says that the NHS is administering only about half the amount of radiotherapy needed to treat British patients properly.

Williams has research showing that, in Britain, only 28,000 doses of radiation are given per million people compared with the recommended 54,000.

Williams accepts that the government has invested heavily in radiotherapy since 2000, but he says: “Restricted access to radiotherapy services means that some British cancer patients are dying.”

The full article is here.

Posted by James Bartholomew • Indexed in NHS

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