NHS Backlog for Missed Cancer Diagnoses May Hit 50,000
According to MacMillan Cancer Support, there have been close to 50,000 missed cancer diagnoses since the time of the first lockdown, with the charity warning that the number could increase drastically over the coming months due to winter pressures placed on the NHS. The charity have also commented that there is currently a shortage of qualified cancer nurses to assist in tackling the backlog, exacerbating the initial problem. The Express has the story.
The NHS is struggling to work its way through the number of people waiting for treatment which spiked during Government-imposed lockdowns, when citizens were told to avoid using health services where possible. And figures suggest that the situation will get much worse before it starts to get better, with upcoming cancer checks likely to add significantly to the patient waiting list.
Macmillan Cancer Support has estimated that more than 47,000 people in the UK have missed a cancer diagnosis since the first lockdown.
Amid warnings of new Covid variants and further disruption to the NHS this winter, the charity added that the number of missed diagnoses could increase further still.
Steven McIntosh, Executive Director of Advocacy and Communications at the charity, said: “Nearly two years into the pandemic, there is still a mountain of almost 50,000 people who are missing a cancer diagnosis.
“Thousands more are already facing delays and disruption as they go through treatment.”
In order to catch up with the number of people who should have started treatment since March last year, Macmillan Cancer Support estimated that NHS England would have to work at a staggering 110% capacity for 13 consecutive months.
McIntosh added: “While hard-working healthcare professionals continue to do all they can to diagnose and treat patients on time, they are fighting an uphill battle.
“Cancer patients are stuck, waiting in a system that doesn’t have the capacity to treat them fast enough, let alone deal with the backlog of thousands who have yet to come forward.”
The charity warned that a primary issue faced by the NHS in its challenge to work through the cancer backlog was a lack of cancer nurses.
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There’s still no risk:benefit analysis of lockdown from government.
Of course not. Nor is there any attempt to address the artificial capacity crisis. Why would they if the aim is to undermine the NHS?
I’m not sure the capacity crisis is artificial.
For several generations now our society has been encouraged to gorge itself on public services, the NHS being the flagship of these.
They’ve created an insatiable monster.
The experience of many in the NHS is that they spend inordinate amounts of time treating people that are one way or another hopeless. Hopeless because they just manage their lives so badly that they stumble from one health problem to the next and the system is designed to treat their bodies, not their actual health.
We’ve created a society that has slowly eroded the sense of responsibility and browbeaten people into accepting that the “weak” “poor” and “disadvantaged” are in that situation for no fault of their own.
Our society is sick and rotten to the core as far as I’m concerned.
“I’m not sure the capacity crisis is artificial.”
What I meant was that capacity is variable (but not infinite). There has been attempt to seriously increase it. Austria (see ‘Postcard’) is using the same meme.
Demand is a problem for the NHS – but, objectively, the comparative per capita resourcing is not excessive.
There should be ‘no’ before ‘attempt. Sorry.
I know traditionally government has always been incompetent & organized cock-up after cock-up but no one is this useless, politicians are just useful idiots, (the origins of that term are founded in communism (so they say)).
But useful to whom, Maybe comrade Gates knows?
It was Lenin’s term for those who supported his attempts attempts to ensure Bolshevik victory in the ever widening Russian Revolution be they fighting against Karenkys Provisional Government, the Social Democrats or, closer to home, the Mensheviks.
He would thwart hard liners wishes to eliminate them so long as they still had something to offer in his fight against his current main opponents, hence Useful Idiot.
I had a NHS ‘red flag’ referral in August for a skin lesion which turned out to be malignant and required two lots of surgery. The NHS appointment which turned up eventually was for early December, 16 weeks later. Fortunately I was able to be seen and treated privately and I know how privileged I was to be able to do so. And all is well. I wrote to the Prime Minister asking for refund of my healthcare expenses, since the NHS are in breach of contract. He referred me to the first minister of the devolved government here. I wrote to the first minister asking for a refund and for a copy of the risk assessment and strategic options considered for the NHS covid response, together with the CVs, education, training and experience details of the staff or consultants who carried out the risk assessment. No response so far. My next step will probably be to take them to the small claims court. Or at least try.
Glad all is well with you and good luck with your valid claim.
I don’t think you were privileged (much misused word nowadays), I think you were cheated out of utilising the system that was set up by your fellow countrymen for just such a situation as yours. The fact that their prudence has been scandalously flouted in recent years is deplorable.
I first thought that you had been referred to the Private Sector because of the NHSs inability to treat you themselves.
They sometimes do this
based not on your clinical need but on their ‘need’ not to miss their waiting list target.
I have heard this from medics who work either in the private sector or NHS or both at the same time.
Far from an attitude of ‘sod the exepense’, the private sector is expected to offer a ‘turnover discount yet still make a profit as their overheads are so much lower.r
My NHS GP, who to his credit was able to see me quickly in August, said to me while entering my referral into the NHS system “don’t bother with the NHS” and he gave me a name and a written referral, which he advised me to pursue if I had the money. The private consultant saw me within about 2 weeks and during the very first consultation juggled her appointments for that morning so that she could remove the lesion immediately. It was removed and on its way to a pathology lab within 30 minutes of me meeting her.
That’s good to hear even if it was only because you were able to afford it which should not have been the case, I wish you every success in retrieving your unnecessary outgoings.
To the submissive, lockdown loving sheep, this simply supports the case for implementing whatever draconian measures necessary to eliminate covid so it doesn’t overwhelm the health system and crowd out other services.
Great. Let’s sack some ore nurses.
And procure even more Midazolam
MEP’s
rantmeet again.MEP’S IN THE EU DEFENDING PEOPLE’S RIGHTS AGAINST DIGITAL PASSPORTS
I suspect that waiting room capacity is at least 30% less than normal due to all those seats ‘blocked off’ due to ‘covid’. So while they may all be working ‘to capacity’ it’s not the numbers it used to be.
Slightly off topic ..Nudge unit SPI-B game playing ..Making a scarey word up from the word Moronic, what a hoot..OMICRON. You couldn’t make this stuff up..er hang on..
On a par with the Pig Dictators £100 bet with colleagues that he could insert the words ‘Pepa Pig’ into a speech
Proof if any were needed of the contempt these self shagging public schoolboys have for us
I know barristers who used to do that in court – had to get a particular word or set of words into their summing up – the one I remember was “cold blancmange”.
No profits in cancer treatment
Sure there is, take some statins.
They don’t call it the cancer industry for nothing. The money to be made is in the research, development and sale of cancer drugs (surprise surprise), and the drugs they prescribe to combat the side effects of the cancer drugs, etc etc. The drugs are often so toxic they kill the patient before the cancer does. The more advanced the cancer, the more they can justify using people as guinea pigs for highly experimental (often gene based) therapies. A cynic like me would say there’s a lot of money to be made off the back of allowing people’s cancers to develop beyond the curable stage.
I don’t believe it! Modern medical science is so advanced now, there are literally no healthy people left 😉
At least the first paragraph of the newspaper quote says why this is happening, rather than the evasive, anodyne blaming of “the Pandemic”, as distinct from the consequences of Government actions and edicts. The latter were never properly considered, let alone costed in terms of money, suffering, lives to be lost other than directly (not the fatuous 28 day overcounting) from Covid. One gale of wind has been sown, and perhaps another with the “vaccines”, and we will be reaping whirlwinds for decades to come.
The charity have also commented that there is currently a shortage of qualified cancer nurses to assist in tackling the backlog, exacerbating the initial problem.
Of course the jab mandates will have had nothing to do with that. Things may indeed soon get much worse, but that is almost certainly the intention of Johnson’s criminal government.
Chris Whitty fears Britons WON’T accept lockdown rules to fight off Omicron super-variant over winter
He obviously knows something Depifffel doesn’t.
Billy Hunt likes Chris Whitty, and describes him as “the saviour of all human civilisation.”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dpCxpmegbnE
This is a news item that is going to be churned out for the next 20 years now. People denied healthcare by the NHS are more likely to die. Sort of stating the obvious.
The best thing people can do to stay healthy is to not do anything too reckless, and eat and drink proper, nutritious foods, do exercise, not smoke tobacco products, not drink too much alcohol, don’t take drugs, etc. – all sounds a bit boring but there you are.
Don’t worry, the Tories will have a solution, first they have to run it down some more.
How long do politicians have to keep on promising heaven and delivering hell before people catch on and stop getting swept away by rhetoric? – Thomas Sowell
Stuff the Cancer patients !
Only people dying “with” Covid matter as that’s all the NHS is now for !!!!
Everyone else can just suddenly drop dead at home in increasing numbers and it doesn’t matter a bit. Great success!
GIVE ME THAT NEEDLE AGAIN !!!!!
ONHS GC isn’t struggling to treat the fellow my wife met in the bakers’ this morning. His diagnosis was too late and his oesophageal cancer is inoperable.
Depopulation at its finest.
‘People whose cancer treatment was halted because of the pressure on the NHS due to Covid…’
‘There is a backlog of suspected cancer patients awaiting diagnosis due to Covid…”
Even worse information is now emerging… The jabs, first, second, third boosters, possibly 4th, 5th… – the jabs with spike protein toxins actually damage the cells by preventing their ability to self-repair against cancer ( which is a cell multiplying beyond the control of the repair mechanism – and so on, until metastasising throughout the body…)
The more jabs you take, the sooner and more likely you are to get cancer within the near future!
You have been warned by studies out there in the Public Domain if you just dig a little deeper.
“if we save just one life” (ignores 000s of cancer and other deaths from a failed NHS as a result of focusing on one issue)