Government must act to ‘level up’ cancer services
Action needs to be taken now to save thousands of families from the devastation and heartbreak that cancer continues to bring to people living in our region.
AS PEOPLE across the globe mark World Cancer Day, we are calling for the Government to take action to address the significant problems facing cancer patients right here in Yorkshire.
Health Secretary Sajid Javid recently announced that it’s time to launch a “war on cancer”, and that he is working on a new vision to “radically improve the outcomes for cancer patients”.
Yorkshire Cancer Research is this county’s dedicated and independent cancer charity. We’ve been on the front line of a war on cancer in our region for nearly 100 years, finding new ways to prevent, diagnose, and treat cancer.
Yorkshire has significantly higher rates of people getting and dying from cancer than the England average. And while the pandemic has had a noticeable impact on cancer care in our region (as it has across the country and the world), many of the problems were present long before Covid-19.
Today we have published an open letter to Mr Javid to highlight the challenges we’re facing in Yorkshire which the Government can and must address to impact cancer not just in our region but elsewhere too.
We ask the Government to: Prioritise ‘levelling up’ cancer survival across the country and publish a clear plan with details for how this will be achieved in Yorkshire.
Deliver on its promise to provide additional funding for the cancer workforce and provide clarity on how much will be committed, where it will be spent and how it will have an impact for people with cancer.
Reverse cuts in public health budgets, particularly in areas of Yorkshire which have been hardest hit by diminished funding for stop smoking services.
Deprivation and poor health go hand in hand. Compared to the most affluent areas, the most deprived areas have more cancers diagnosed, fewer diagnosed early, more deaths from cancer, and lower chances of surviving a year after diagnosis.
Mr Javid recently called the health gap between the richest and poorest a “moral outrage”, and we sincerely agree. Yorkshire is the third most deprived region in England, and many of our cities and towns have high levels of local deprivation.
Inequality is causing the deaths of thousands of people in Yorkshire. Our analysis has estimated that if all areas of Yorkshire were equal to the most affluent areas of our region, 2,000 lives could be saved every year from cancer.
The Government has made promises to ‘level up’ the poorest parts of the country. We request that ‘levelling up’ cancer survival across the country is made a priority.
Early diagnosis of cancer is an important determinant of survival. The NHS Long Term Plan set a target that three out of four staged cancers would be diagnosed early by 2028. However, the most recent statistics show that Yorkshire will miss this target by more than 40 years.
Diagnosing cancer early depends on having enough diagnostic staff. However, staff shortages have been a long-running issue, and even before the pandemic, one in 10 diagnostic posts were unfilled.
As part of the One Cancer Voice coalition of cancer charities, we’ve called on the Government to increase funding by £216m to boost the workforce by 45 per cent by 2029. The recent comprehensive spending review committed “hundreds of millions of pounds in additional funding” to make a bigger and better trained NHS workforce. But we want to see clarification on how this money will be spent and how it will improve cancer diagnosis in Yorkshire.
We’re also calling for Mr Javid to commit to providing significant funding for stop smoking services in Yorkshire. Yorkshire has the highest rate of smoking in England, and, every hour, one person dies because of this addiction. The most deprived areas of our region are also the places with the highest rates of smoking.
The Government has set a target for the UK to go smoke-free by 2030. But Yorkshire is set to miss that target by 15 years. People who want to stop smoking deserve to receive help. But stop smoking service funding has been cut by 37 per cent in Yorkshire since 2016.
To help more smokers quit, we support what Mr Javid has called a ‘vaping revolution’, to increase investment and
focus on vaping products. We have led campaigns to highlight the potential of vaping devices. However, only one in 10 local authorities provide vaping products as part of their stop smoking services.
Action needs to be taken now to save thousands of families from the devastation and heartbreak that cancer continues to bring to people living in our region.
We look forward to seeing the details of Mr Javid’s vision for improving cancer services and survival, and we invite him to visit Yorkshire and see for himself how the “war on cancer” is being fought in our region.