22 Tuesday April 5 2022 | the times
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Tens of thousands of cancer patients
could die each year because the NHS
will miss a target for early diagnosis,
according to a report by MPs.
The health and social care comm-
ittee warned that decades of improve-
ment in cancer survival rates risk going
into reverse due to staff shortages and
disruption caused by the pandemic.
The government has pledged to
increase the proportion of cancers
diagnosed early — at stage 1 or 2 — to
75 per cent by 2028, saying this would
help to save 55,000 lives a year. But the
Landslide kills
British tourists
in Australia
Bernard Lagan SydneyA British man and his nine-year-old
son have been killed in a landslide
caused by heavy rain near Sydney. The
man’s wife and another son were seri-
ously injured but a 15-year-old girl es-
caped, traumatised but unhurt.
She was rescued from the hiking trail
in the Blue Mountains National Park
after making a frantic phone call to
police after the landslide, saying: “I
don’t know where we are.”
Sydney police confirmed that the
family of five were British citizens on
holiday in Australia.
The boy and his 49-year-old father
died at the scene, police said. A 50-year-
old woman and a 14-year-old boy were
taken to hospital with serious head and
abdominal injuries.
A police helicopter and cliff rescue
team were deployed to the remote loca-
tion in dense bush and brought the
mother and son out at 6pm yesterday.
Ambulance Superintendent Stewart
Clarke said: “This was a really complex
and delicate rescue operation for our
crews who were working to access
patients in rugged bushland and were
navigating unstable ground.”
The park authority’s website said
that part of the track was closed “due to
flood damage and ongoing rockfall
risk”. However, the section of the track
where the family was walking was open.
Sydney had its wettest March since
records began more than 150 years ago.What’s prayer
wor th? Ab out
$2 to believers
Tom Whipple Science EditorJohn Bunyan, author of The Pilgrim’s
Progress, said prayer was more valuable
“than treasures of gold or silver”. Sir
Thomas Buxton, the abolitionist, called
it “precious beyond all price.”
From Saint Augustine to Pope Fran-
cis, Christians have agreed you cannot
put a value on prayer. They are wrong:
a prayer is worth, on average, $2.34.
And that is if you are a believer. If you
are an atheist, you will pay a bit less to
not have someone pray for you.
Researchers, whose work is pub-
lished in PLoS One, asked more than
650 volunteers in the US to describe a
recent hardship. Then they gave them
$5 and told them they could, if they
wished, pay for someone to pray for
them or not pray for them.
Linda Thunstrom, an economist at
the University of Wyoming who con-
ducted the study, found that religious
Christians would forgo, on average,
$2.34 of their $5 for the prayer.
About half thought that buying a
prayer would help them through direct
divine intervention to improve their
material situation or wealth. Some said
that simply knowing someone was
praying for them helped.
Of those who paid to avoid having a
prayer said, half did not want a
“stranger to feel good about a meaning-
less gesture.” A quarter said that any-
thing connected to religion offended
them.Decades of progress on cancer rates at risk
report found that progress towards this
target was “inadequate” and, instead,
the current early diagnosis rate of
54 per cent was expected to “remain
static until 2028”.
It said: “This would mean 343,000
more people receiving a late diagnosis
between 2019 and 2028. In 2028 alone,
65,700 people would miss out on an
early diagnosis... 65,700 people who
could be more likely to die sooner from
their cancer as a result.”
Jeremy Hunt, Tory chairman of the
committee and former health secre-
tary, highlighted the case of Jessica
Brady, 27, who died in December 2020after a five-month battle to get diag-
nosed. The York University graduate
contacted her GP 20 times over several
months before finally receiving a dia-
gnosis for stage 4 adenocarcinoma — a
rare cancer that starts in glandular
cells. She died three weeks later.
Hunt said: “Unfortunately, many
more lives will almost certainly end
prematurely without earlier diagnosis
and prompt treatment.” He said
progress towards early diagnosis was
“being jeopardised by staff shortages”.
“We do not believe that the NHS is on
track to meet the government’s target
on early cancer diagnosis by 2028. Weare further concerned at the damaging
and prolonged impact of the pandemic
on cancer services with a real risk that
gains made in cancer survival will go
into reverse.”
Early diagnosis drastically improves
survival chances. For example, 90 per
cent of bowel cancer patients diag-
nosed at stage 1 survive for five years,
compared with 10 per cent diagnosed at
the final stage 4. The report welcomed
a new £2.3 billion investment in diag-
nostic hubs, but said it must be matched
by a staffing plan. The NHS is short of
nearly 2,000 radiologists, vital in diag-
nosing cancer, 390 consultant patholo-
gists and 189 clinical oncologists.
MPs wrote: “Neither earlier dia-
gnosis nor additional prompt cancer
treatment will be possible without
addressing gaps in the cancer work-
force and we found little evidence of a
serious effort to do this.”
They said this meant survival rates in
England would continue to lag behind
other comparable western countries,
including Canada and Australia.
The report highlighted the devastat-
ing impact of the pandemic on NHScancer care, warning treatment was
“rationed” and operations cancelled.
There were 326,000 fewer urgent re-
ferrals for suspected cancer during the
first year of the pandemic than previous
years, while 45,000 fewer people in the
UK began treatment.
Professor Pat Price, co-founder of
CatchUpWithCancer, said: “The UK
was at the bottom of the cancer league
tables before the pandemic and the
Covid-induced backlog has pushed us
towards complete collapse. I urge the
government to listen to these recom-
mendations in the new cancer plan.
Otherwise, this will translate into more
people dying younger.”
An NHS England spokesman said:
“Cancer is a priority for the NHS and
has been throughout the pandemic and
we have continued to implement new
ways to diagnose cancer earlier, includ-
ing extending lung health checks in
supermarket car parks, rolling out
awareness campaigns to encourage
people to get symptoms checked soon-
er, and trialling innovations like a blood
test to detect more than 50 types of
cancer before symptoms even appear.”Eleanor Hayward Health Correspondent