Blood Cancer: Coronavirus

(asked on 10th March 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make it his policy to support an urgent evaluation by NHS England of blood cancer outcomes during the covid-19 outbreak.


Answered by
Maria Caulfield Portrait
Maria Caulfield
Parliamentary Under Secretary of State (Department for Business and Trade) (Minister for Women)
This question was answered on 7th April 2022

The National Health Service is establishing non-specific symptom pathways to streamline diagnostic services for cancer, including those symptoms which may indicate potential blood cancer. We are also investing £325 million in diagnostics to provide patients with access to personalised care.

The current ‘Help us help you’ awareness campaign was launched in March 2022, to address some of the barriers which may prevent people consulting their general practitioner on the potential symptoms of cancer. NHS England and NHS Improvement are developing future phases of the campaign in 2022/23 to raise awareness of key cancer symptoms. The full impacts of the pandemic on blood cancer outcomes are not yet known. We remain committed to returning the number of people waiting over 62 days to start treatment to pre-pandemic levels and increasing referrals by encouraging patients to come forward.

Since September 2020, the Cancer Alliance Data, Evaluation and Analysis Service and the National Cancer Registration and Analysis Service have published analysis on the recovery of urgent cancer referrals and first treatments by age, sex, ethnicity and deprivation. This data is informing the restoration and recovery of cancer services and is available at the following link:

http://www.ncin.org.uk/local_cancer_intelligence/cadeas

Reticulating Splines