The government has announced a £50m fund which should give very sick cancer patients access to drugs sooner.

It will mean that from October, rather than next year, doctors in England can offer drugs which have not been approved by the rationing body NICE.

The announcement was made at the launch of a study showing that the UK lags in providing the newest cancer drugs.

The fund will be financed by ditching the former government’s plan for free personal care for the old.

It means that cancer patients will be able to access new drugs earlier to help extend life by weeks or months or improve quality of life in the final stages of the disease.

The government’s cancer tsar Professor Sir Mike Richards, who led the research into the UK’s ranking on drug provision, stressed however it would not improve overall survival rates.

Read more at BBC Health.

Survival rates for some cancers have doubled over the past four decades, a charity has said.

People with breast, bowel and ovarian cancers, and non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, are now twice as likely to survive for at least 10 years than in the 1970s.

Cancer Research UK’s figures show leukaemia survival is now four times as high, although the charity warned there was still much work to do.

The Department of Health said it was “delighted” by the findings.

Launching a television campaign, the charity said investment in research was key to further boosting survival.

Read more at BBC Health.

A five-minute, one-off screening test could prevent thousands of people dying from bowel cancer every year, a study published in The Lancet suggests.

There are now calls for the test to be rolled out across the UK after results from 200,000 people aged 55-64 found it cut deaths by 43% over 10 years.

Cancer Research UK described the results from the Imperial College, London, study as a “rare breakthrough”.

The independent bowel cancer screening committee will discuss whether it would be cost-effective to incorporate the procedure - known as sigmoidoscopy - into the UK’s screening programmes.

Scientists from Imperial College, London, who carried out the research, argue the costs would be outweighed by the savings generated through reducing the incidence of the disease, the UK’s second biggest cancer killer.

Read more at BBC Health.

Blunders by GPs, hospital doctors and nurses jeopardised the health of thousands of patients when cancer was misdiagnosed or not spotted soon enough, according to an NHS report.

Over a period of a year, doctors failed to spot key signs of cancer, tissue samples were mixed up, some patients were wrongly given an all-clear and vital diagnostic tests were delayed because of staff and equipment shortages, the study, undertaken by the NHS’s National Patient Safety Agency (NPSA), found.

Delayed diagnosis of cancer can lead to a patient dying earlier than expected or needing more invasive treatment than would have been necessary.

The NPSA’s Delayed diagnosis of cancer: thematic review details failures by NHS staff, including pathologists and administration staff, in 1,650 incidents reported by healthcare professionals in 2007-08 which involved a cancer sufferer getting a late diagnosis. The NPSA said the 1,650 figure was “an underestimate” but could not say by how much.

When 508 cases were examined in detail, it was found that 177 patients were harmed. Two died, 25 suffered severe harm, 52 moderate harm and 88 low harm. Of a sample of 150 patients, 37% experienced delays of up to three months, 38% of more than three months and some had delays of three years.

The government estimates that 10,000 die each year because of late diagnosis of cancer. The UK is poor by international standards at diagnosing cancer, studies have shown.

Read more at The Guardian.  

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.