Why did it take doctors two years to diagnose Joel with leukaemia?

He’s one of thousands of patients to miss out on a simple blood test that could be the difference between life and death

LEUKAEMIA patients are being misdiagnosed or waiting too long for a simple yet vital blood test that can flag up the disease – meaning that many suffer worse illness, and may even die when treatment given earlier could have saved them. In light of the worrying new research, two of Britain’s

blood cancer charities today issue a plea to health chiefs and policymakers to tackle the problem and reduce the grim toll of an illness that kills 5,000 Britons every year.

According to official NHS guidance, anyone visiting their GP with telltale symptoms such as persistent fatigue, fever, bruising or bleeding and recurrent infections should be referred for a ‘very urgent’ full blood count within 48 hours – a test that costs the NHS as little as £2.65.

But data shared exclusively with The Mail on Sunday suggests just a third of patients are picked up straight away, and a quarter go for up to four months and see a GP multiple times before being given the test. In this time, the condition can worsen to the point that it’s untreatable.

In one shocking case, a 31-year-old electrician went undiagnosed for almost two years.

Father-of-one Joel Atkinson, from

Bishop’s Stortford in Hertfordshire, was hit with severe shoulder and back discomfort in late 2019, which was initially put down to a stressful job and, later, arthritis.

As his health deteriorated, he spoke to doctors and NHS 111, and visited A&E ‘countless’ times, suffering crushing fatigue, night sweats and excruciating pain. Yet it was only after collapsing at home and being rushed by ambulance to hospital and then into intensive care that he was finally diagnosed with leukaemia.