Health: Early Diagnosis

Baroness Gardner of Parkes Excerpts

Monday 21st November 2011 Lords Chamber

[Earl Howe]

My Lords, the Government have no current plans for a specific national campaign to raise awareness of diabetes. On the other hand, as part of Change4Life, which we are continuing with, we aim to raise awareness about diet and physical activity, and to create what we hope will be a mass movement to help to reduce obesity and related conditions, including diabetes. The campaign encourages everyone to,

“eat well, move more and live longer”.

There is also the very important ingredient of the NHS Health Check in this area, which the noble Lord is familiar with, for people in England aged 40 to 74. We think that this has the potential to prevent over 4,000 people a year from developing diabetes.

[Baroness Gardner of Parkes]

My Lords, I am sure that the noble Earl is well aware that not only lung cancer but all forms of cancer benefit hugely from early diagnosis. Will he ensure that one existing problem is dealt with, perhaps through further encouragement of medical education? In the very rare cases of osteosarcoma, and to a certain extent oral cancer, GPs are not really aware; cases are referred to them and are missed. Surely this must be a matter of further training in the specialities of these rare conditions.

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend is absolutely right. It is widely recognised that GPs have very important roles in prevention and early diagnosis of cancer of all kinds but that, until recently, there has been very little information available to enable GPs to benchmark their own activity and performance against that of other practices. We have launched what we are calling GP practice profiles, which will bring together a range of outcomes and process information relevant to cancer in primary care, so that GPs have comparative information available to benchmark their own performance. I think this will be a major plus in taking these variations forward.