THE POSITIVE PROFESSOR
SOCIAL media’s voice of calm Karol Sikora has been signed up by the Daily Express. Readers can now enjoy his soothing advice in these troubled times that have won him hundreds of thousands of followers on Twitter. If you need reassuring everything’s going to be all right read Professor Positivity.
HAVING spent 50 years in medicine, and the vast majority of them treating cancer patients, I am not often shocked by cancer statistics but the data recently reported in the Express left me extremely concerned.
Figures from the Diagnostic Imaging Dataset, which collects information about different tests, are difficult to believe.
Chest and abdomen CTs are down 35 per cent on last year, brain MRIs down 42 per cent and chest X- rays down 39 per cent, with GP referrals down by significant margins across the board. All within the timescale of just six months.
You don’t need to be a Professor of Cancer Medicine to know how serious those numbers are.
Macmillan estimated that up to 50,000 additional people have cancer but don’t know it because of disruptions caused by Covid- 19 and the subsequent restrictions. Figures like this make me think it could be even worse.
People just aren’t getting into the system. The argument about hospitals being overwhelmed by Covid is a fair one, but it isn’t applicable to these numbers. For whatever reason, fear or otherwise, people aren’t coming forward to get these tests done.
We’ve seen this at Rutherford Cancer Centres. Far more people are presenting with late- stage cancer.
Pummelling a population into submission using fear was always going to have severe negative consequences.
Did the scientists on SAGE anticipate these terrifying figures? If they did, why was more not done to help? If not, they clearly don’t understand the consequences of their decisions.
So what can we do to fix it? I keep saying it and I’m boring myself, but it’s so important – we have to give people the confidence to seek medical help.
I’d love to see a special dedicated press conference to this, fronted by the Prime Minister. No talk of Covid, just a clear focus on the other illnesses that will continue to kill thousands of people unnecessarily.