NHS trust to cancel all cancer treatment

Surge in virus patients forces drastic move, leaving disease sufferers fearing for their lives

AN NHS hospital trust has become the first to postpone all routine cancer surgery and chemotherapy due to a surge in coronavirus patients.

Barking, Havering and Redbridge NHS Trust said the crisis meant cancer treatments would be delayed for at least two weeks. Only the most “urgent operations” will be carried out, with endoscopy appointments also cancelled or delayed, a spokesman said.

It comes after hospitals were advised to ration cancer services to patients with the highest chance of survival.

Hospitals have since begun telling sufferers that their planned surgery or chemotherapy appointments have been cancelled until further notice.

Only two weeks ago, NHS England insisted cancer treatment would not be affected when it announced plans to suspend all non-urgent procedures.

So far, three patients diagnosed with coronavirus have died at the two hospitals run by the Barking trust.

A spokesman said: “We have made some further significant changes to keep our patients safe as we deal with Covid-19. This is because we are now seeing an increase in the number of seriously ill patients (who have tested positive for Covid-19) at our hospitals, which is only going to increase in the days and weeks ahead.

“Therefore from today, we are postponing all routine, planned surgery (including day cases and cancer operations). Stopping all outpatient appointments (including endoscopy and chemotherapy). This includes both face-to-face and telephone appointments. We will keep these changes under review. They will remain in place for at least the next two weeks.”

Trusts across the UK are beginning to cancel cancer treatments for “a number of important and rational reasons”, a senior NHS source told The Daily Telegraph. Health bosses are facing a lack of capacity with intensive care wards requiring ventilators to keep coronavirus patients alive.

Meanwhile, cancer specialists are being retrained in respiratory techniques to help coronavirus patients.

Cancer patients, however, spoke of fears that delays or cancellations to their treatment could put their lives at risk. Claire Elliott, 51, from Worcestershire, said that it made her “feel like my life is not worth anything”.

Diagnosed with uterine cancer in 2016, Mrs Elliott was given less than a year to live in 2018, but was told she had beaten the condition 10 months later. The cancer has since returned and she has been undergoing palliative chemotherapy – but the pandemic is now set to interrupt her treatment.

“I’ve been expecting it, but I’m a bit tearful. It makes me feel like my life is not worth anything,” she said.