Staff crisis hits cancer patients
CANCER patients may miss out on life-saving treatment due to a lack of consultants, experts warn.
The UK is short of at least 184 clinical oncologists, according to a report by the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR). It estimates that a growing staffing crisis means the NHS workforce could be 22 per cent short of consultants by 2023.
Consequently, new cancer therapies – such as immunotherapy – may not be delivered.
Lead author Dr Tom Roques, the RCR’s medical director of professional practice for clinical oncology, said: “Clinical oncologists are vital to the rollout of these new therapies, but we do not have enough of them.”
An NHS spokesperson said: “The NHS has published plans to recruit an additional 1,500 staff across seven priority cancer specialisms by 2021 and the size of that workforce has already grown by 803 since 2017.”
Experts today predict that the UK will see the biggest drop in breast cancer death rates of the six largest EU countries this year. Death rates in the UK are expected to fall by 13 per cent, followed by France (10 per cent).
Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive at charity Breast Cancer Now, said: “While this analysis represents very positive news, our rate of progress appears to be much greater than our neighbours largely because we have had some of the highest mortality rates in Europe for a long time.”