Ten point plan to cut 10,000 unnecessary cancer deaths in the UK
One of Britain’s leading Consultant Oncologists claims that a staggering 10,000 deaths per year are caused by the NHS’s failure to treat cancer patients fast enough and he has drawn up a ten point plan aimed at dramatically improving survival rates.
Cancer specialist Professor Karol Sikora, Dean of the country’s first independent Medical School at The University of Buckingham, says it is a disgrace that Britain has trailed near the bottom of the European Survival League for two decades. He believes his plan would put us at the top.
The ten point plan is a vision of how the NHS could speed up diagnosis and treatment to save lives. Professor Sikora, who is unveiling the ten point plan at a lecture titled Can we do better for Cancer? at The University of Buckingham on 27 January 2015, said: “In spite of a lot of effort straddling decades we still lag behind in the European league table for cancer survival. The NHS can provide the best cancer care in the world and for some complex cancers such as lymphoma, leukaemia and testicular cancer we are as good as anywhere. But the common cancers – breast, lung, colon and prostate – are the problem, resulting in excess deaths equivalent to one jumbo jet crashing every two weeks.”
Professor Sikora underlined the need for the importance of early cancer diagnosis to be taught right from the start. The new four and a half year medical degree at The University of Buckingham has a curriculum which radically differs from other universities with an emphasis on Narrative Medicine – students are coached in communicating effectively and sympathetically with patients and learning to recognise serious symptoms through close contact with patients in primary care from day one.