Haematological Cancer

(asked on )

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure early diagnosis of blood cancer.


Answered by
Steve Brine Portrait
Steve Brine
This question was answered on 14th March 2018

Early diagnosis of blood cancers is difficult as symptoms, such as tiredness or back pain, are often misdiagnosed. For suspected blood cancers, the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence published a revised guideline in 2015 which clearly sets out that general practitoners should consider a very urgent full blood count within 48 hours to assess for leukaemia if adults present with suspicious symptoms.

In December 2016 the Government announced transformation funding of £200 million for Cancer Alliances to encourage new and innovative ways to diagnose cancer earlier, improve the care for those living with cancer and ensure that each cancer patient gets the right care for them.

Additionally, the Accelerate, Coordinate and Evaluate Programme is a unique early diagnosis initiative, a programme of 60 projects exploring innovative concepts of diagnosing cancer earlier across England. The programme is testing a new multi-disciplinary diagnostic centre approach to diagnosing patients with vague or unclear but concerning symptoms, often characteristic of hard to diagnose cancers like blood cancers.

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