Cancer is not waiting for Assembly’s return

THE Department of Health (News, October 26) defends the lack of a renewed cancer strategy by stating that five and 10-year survival times are better than ever.

This data is based on patients diagnosed over five years ago, when waiting times, albeit not on target, were superior to their current status, quoted often in your newspaper and elsewhere.

It begs the question as to outcomes in five and 10 years from the present. Tumours are ticking and waiting for nobody.

It is not only a question of survival times.

Consider the case with bowel cancer.

If diagnosed at an early stage there is a relatively high prospect not only of survival, but also of less punitive therapies being needed to treat than if diagnosed at stage four and spreading to other organs.

The quality of life during and after treatment is dramatically different in these two situations.

In the early case, chemotherapy and radiotherapy may not be necessary, with all the concomitant damage caused — even if one survives.

Accordingly, I would argue very strongly that the Department of Health is defending the indefensible. Patients need action and their undiagnosed tumours cannot wait for an Executive to return.

In Scotland screening for bowel cancer is available at 50 years of age. England and Wales are also introducing this lower age. There is a compelling argument to introduce the reduced-age screening in Northern Ireland.

There is no humane or political argument against such a strategy. As for economies, earlier treatment is far less expensive than the costs incurred during later treatment.

There is no shortage of international research to substantiate this assertion.

DR ED GOODALL FIS

PAC, Eurnopacolon and NICRCF