Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made additional resources available for the purposes of reducing the backlog of people accessing the Targeted Lung Health Check programme that arose as a result of that programme having been paused in 2020.
The targeted lung health check pilot schemes in Manchester and Liverpool have shown positive results. In Manchester, there was an almost five-fold reduction in stage 4 disease, with 80% of cancers diagnosed at an early stage. However, it is too early to compare diagnosis or outcomes by cancer stage from the pilot projects as data is not yet available for the national projects in the same period.
Targeted lung health check sites are increasing accessibility through the use of telephone consultations and mobile services. Although the launch of the checks was paused to protect patient safety during the pandemic NHS England and NHS Improvement have advised that there is no current backlog.