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.
Tags: Cancer
