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Cancer strategy under fire

02/11/2007

The government's cancer strategy has come under fire today in a report which claims it has a number of weaknesses.

Published by the thinktank Civitas, the report praises improvements in avoidable deaths from cancer but says the decline in mortality has been less steep since 1999.

This, it says, is at odds with trends since 1979.

Steps to prevent deaths from circulatory disease also face criticism as the study says avoidable mortality rates from this condition remain far above most European countries of comparable development.

Bucking trends in declines in avoidable deaths can be ill-afforded, the report concludes, before describing the £2 billion funding in cancer treatment under the NHS cancer plan of 2000 has been "negligible".

Commenting on the rates of deaths from circulatory disease, the study says that if France - the best performing country - made no improvements in the coming years and the NHS continued to improve at the same rate as between 1999 and 2004, it would take until 2019 for England and Wales to catch up.

"While it's true that the NHS should be given a degree of extra leeway for having to deal with higher incidence of circulatory disease, it's also true we're still a long way behind. The flat-lining of improvement in preventable deaths from cancer is also a massive worry," said the report's author James Gubb.

"Crucially, this study isolates conditions where it's reasonable to expect death to be averted even after the onset of disease. With top quality health care for all in England and Wales there's no intrinsic reason why mortality rates shouldn't fall to the levels of the best international performers."

The Department of Health is due to publish its new cancer strategy by the end of this year.