Cancer centres gathering dust despite ballooning NHS waiting lists
WORLD-CLASS cancer centres that could treat 3,500 patients a month have been shut for six months despite waiting lists being at record levels.
The Rutherford Health Group went into liquidation in June, forcing the closure of centres in Newport, Liverpool, Northumbria and Reading.
Assets were handed to London-based asset management firm Equitix to find a buyer, but despite four bidders the company has not responded to offers. Prof Karol Sikora, an oncologist who helped found Rutherford Health, said it was a scandal that four world-class centres were empty in an NHS cancer crisis.
Half of those treated at the centres were NHS patients.
Prof Sikora said: “What galls me, is that at a time of the biggest backlog in NHS history, we are stuck with these empty buildings which could be up and running again within weeks .
“It would be easy to get going again. We have cancer doctors and nurses who are just twiddling their thumbs. We have two capital funds who are ready and willing to make the investment but we can’t get Equitix to get moving.
“They seem to want to do a deal with the NHS but that is never going to happen because the NHS simply doesn’t have the money.”
Experts have warned that the NHS is facing a “cancer catastrophe” with the National Audit Office estimating that up to 740,000 potential cases that should have been urgently referred by GPS have been missed since the first lockdown. The charity Macmillan Cancer Support has also calculated almost 50,000 people who should have been diagnosed 18 months ago have still not had a diagnosis. Many patients are now facing worse outcomes because their cancer will have progressed to a point where it is more difficult to treat. Excess cancer deaths have now started to show in the weekly death figures.
Even before the pandemic, Britain was languishing at the bottom of international league tables, with the lowest survival rates for five in seven common cancers, according to the World Health Organisation.
Experts predict it could be five years before the NHS catches up with cancer cases missed in the pandemic. The
Rutherford centres, which cost £240 million to set up, offered a range of cancer treatments including proton beam therapy which is less harmful for patients and has only limited availability on the NHS.
Under NHS England targets, 85 per cent of cancer patients should start treatment within two months of an urgent referral from their GP. Currently only about 60 per cent are being treated in that time frame. The Daily Telegraph contacted Equitix but it had not replied at the time of publication.