Every cancer patient in England will be offered free, one-to-one home care by specialist nurses if Labour wins the election, Gordon Brown is to pledge.

In a speech to the King’s Fund think tank today, the PM is expected to pledge access to home treatment for every cancer patient within five years.

Labour says this would save over £2.5bn a year by reducing hospital admissions.

But shadow health secretary Andrew Lansley called on ministers to say what they would cut to pay for the move.

The proposals on cancer treatment are expected to form part of a wider plan to give more patients the option of receiving chemotherapy, dialysis and palliative care without travelling to hospital.

But the Conservatives are sceptical, arguing that while they support specialist nursing, the plan could cost £100m.

Read more at BBC Health.

Patients from deprived areas in England are more likely to have a late cancer diagnosis and be admitted to hospital as an emergency, a study suggests.

Women and older people also fare worse in getting a prompt diagnosis, the team from University College London found.

This did not improve despite an extra £570m being invested via the NHS Cancer plan during the first three years of the 2000-2006 study, the study showed.

The government has said cutting cancer inequalities remains a major goal. Figures for the three most common cancers - colorectal, breast, and lung cancer - were examined for the six-year period.

They showed 564,821 patients aged 50 and over were admitted to an NHS hospital in England with a diagnosis.

Almost a third of patients with colorectal cancer were admitted as emergencies - a proportion which did not improve over time.

More than half of patients with lung cancer were also admitted as emergencies, a figure which got worse over time.

But there was a downward trend in the proportion of patients with breast cancer admitted as emergencies.

Read more at BBC Health.

GPs are to start predicting whether a patient has the early symptoms of cancer using a computer program that calculates risk, under plans to prevent the 10,000 unnecessary deaths a year caused by late diagnosis.

The new approach by the NHS means that doctors will tell patients their percentage chance of having cancer, based on factors like their age, weight and symptoms such as bleeding or sudden weight loss.

Professor Mike Richards, the government’s cancer tsar, said that within five years every GP in England should be using the software as part of a new drive to reduce the huge toll of avoidable cancer deaths.

Computer-assisted cancer risk assessment will help GPs estimate whether a patient’s symptoms could indicate the presence of a cancer and decide whether they needed to refer them for urgent tests in hospital, Richards said.

The computer would assess a patient’s age, weight and symptoms - such as rectal bleeding and constant fatigue - and if the risk were above a certain level, the person would be referred to hospital for urgent exploratory tests within two weeks.

Cancer is the UK’s biggest killer after heart disease and strokes. Britain is far worse than many European countries at diagnosing cancer early, when it is more likely to be treatable and the patient has a much better chance of surviving. That is partly because some patients who develop symptoms delay seeking help, but also because GPs sometimes fail to correctly identify signs of cancer.

Read more at The Guardian.

The country’s biggest cancer charity has expressed shock at government figures revealing huge variations in patients’ chances of surviving from one area of the UK to another.

The biggest survival gap was in lung cancer, where Department of Health figures showed patients in Herefordshire were three times more likely to die within a year of diagnosis than those in Kensington and Chelsea. In the London borough, 44% of patients survived the first year after diagnosis, compared with only 15% in Herefordshire.

In bowel cancer there was also a big gap in survival - 80% in Telford and Wrekin after one year, but only 58% in Waltham Forest and Hastings and Rother. The gap was less pronounced in breast cancer, with the best rate in Torbay, where 99% survived for one year, compared with 89% in Tower Hamlets.

“There is no excuse for such a big difference between different areas,” said Harpal Kumar, chief executive of Cancer Research UK. “It is appalling that someone with lung cancer in Herefordshire should be three times more likely to die within a year than a patient in Kensington, or that a person diagnosed with bowel cancer in Waltham Forest or Hastings should be 22% more likely to die within a year than a patient in Telford. This is the worst kind of postcode lottery.”

Very few primary care trusts (PCTs) had survival rates that were as good as other countries in Europe now or even as good as Europe was achieving 10 years ago, which Kumar called “a disgrace”.

Read more in The Guardian.

A girl who was vaccinated against cervical cancer died from a malignant tumour of the chest and not from a reaction to the jab, it was revealed.

Natalie Morton, 14, died after being given the injection at the Blue Coat Church of England School in Coventry.

Deputy coroner for Coventry Louise Hunt said the vaccine was not thought to have been a contributing factor. A pathologist said her condition was “so severe that death could have arisen at any point”.

Natalie collapsed less than two hours after being given the Cervarix vaccine on Monday.

The deputy coroner, who opened and adjourned the hearing at at Coventry Magistrates’ Court, said: “It appears that Natalie died from a tumour in her chest involving her heart and her lungs.”

The inquest was told that the tumour had “heavily infiltrated” her heart and extended into her left lung.

Read more at BBC Health.

Suspected cancer patients are to be guaranteed a specialist screening within one week, Gordon Brown will announce in his Labour party conference speech.

Budget savings uncovered by the health secretary, Andy Burnham, will be diverted into purchasing diagnostic equipment for the NHS to enable doctors to screen patients for cancer more swiftly.

The pledge to introduce the change before the end of the next parliament extends a policy announced in June, which saw the government end its reliance on targets in the health service and instead gives users “entitlements”, which the NHS must provide.

The pledge to introduce the change before the end of the next parliament extends a policy announced in June, which saw the government end its reliance on targets in the health service and instead gives users “entitlements”, which the NHS must provide.

The prime minister will give hospitals extra resources to help them meet these obligations. With funds of £1bn over five years, departmental officials think the two-week right could be implemented within three years, and say the one-week right could be granted within five years.

Read more at The Guardian.

Every accident and emergency department in England should have a specialist cancer team, say government advisers.

It comes after a report into the deaths of 500 cancer patients found many hospitals were not equipped to deal with severe treatment complications.

A&E departments also need more expertise to pick up undiagnosed cancers, the expert group said. Government cancer tsar Mike Richards said the plans would improve “safety and quality” of care.

Last year the National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death looked at 557 cancer patients who had died within 30 days of having chemotherapy.

It raised a series of questions about chemotherapy services, including concerns that patients suffering severe side-effects or complications ended up in hospital without the right facilities.

Read more at BBC Health.