Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take to ensure all women across England with ovarian cancer get access to the best possible treatment.

NHS England runs the Help Us Help You campaigns to raise public awareness, increase knowledge of cancer symptoms, and address barriers to acting on them to encourage people to come forward as soon as possible to see their general practitioner. Previous phases of the campaigns have focused on abdominal symptoms which, among other abdominal cancers, can be indicative of ovarian cancer. The Department continues to work with NHS England to identify which tumour types future campaigns should focus on.

NHS England and other National Health Service organisations, nationally and locally, also publish information on the signs and symptoms of many different types of cancer, including ovarian cancer. This information can be found at various sources, including the NHS website.

To ensure women have access to the best treatment for ovarian cancer, NHS England commissioned an audit on ovarian cancer. The aim of the audit is to provide timely evidence for cancer service providers of where patterns of care in England may vary to increase consistency of access to treatments, and help stimulate improvements in cancer treatment and outcomes for patients.

The Department also invests in health research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR). The NIHR has funded six research projects into screening for ovarian cancer since 2018, with a combined total funding value of £3.8 million, including looking at the impact and effectiveness of different kinds of testing and screening, and the effectiveness of treatment options.