New cancer strategy gets £750 million boost
pharmafile | January 13, 2011 | News story | | Cancer, NHS, cancer funding, cancer strategy
The government has published a new ‘Strategy for Cancer’ that seeks to increase preventive measures and improve outcomes for oncology patients.
It has pledged £750 million over four years to improve the quality and efficiency of cancer services in England, and aims to move towards outcomes which rival those in Europe.
The new strategy sets out a range of actions that includes earlier diagnosis, helping people to live healthier lives to reduce preventable cancers and introducing new screening programmes.
Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “Our ambition is simple: to deliver survival rates among the best in Europe and this strategy outlines how we will make our first steps towards this.
“The coalition government’s reforms of health and care services will drive improvements in what matters most to patients and their families – cancer outcomes.
“Our commitment is to save 5,000 extra lives a year from 2014/15 and that is what we will be measuring our success against.”
Central to these plans is an investment of more than £450 million to fund increased GP access to diagnostic tests and more testing and treatment in secondary care.
The funds will also be used by Public Health England – the new public health service – to promote screening and raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of cancer.
Over the spending review period, this will allow for primary care access to over two million extra tests, in addition to funding increased testing and treatment in secondary care.
These tests will include chest X rays for diagnosing lung cancer, flexible sigmoidoscopy/colonoscopy to support the diagnosis of bowel cancer and MRI brain scans to help spot signs of brain cancer.
In addition, the government said it would provide extra investment to increase access to radiotherapy and ensure all patients are “able to get this critical treatment”.
In October the government pledged £200 million a year in its Cancer Drugs Fund, set to come into place this April, to help cancer patients access oncology drugs that NICE has not approved.
Ben Adams
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