Seeing Your Doctor Face-To-Face Still A Must In Modern World

Among the many indirect victims of the pandemic is 69-year-old Joy Stokes. It wasn’t the virus that killed the former PE teacher three weeks ago, but the growing use of “telemedicine” as the NHS reduces physical interactions between GPs and patients.

- Ross Clark

Refused face-to-face appointments, Joy was told over the phone that the pain in her legs and hips was arthritis.

Her requests for scans were refused and she was told to seek physiotherapy. In fact, she was suffering from cancer. By the time it was diagnosed it was too late for life-saving surgery.

Sadly, we can expect many more cases like that of Joy’s. Last October, Macmillan Cancer Care estimated that there were already 50,000 “missing” cancer diagnoses – a number it calculated by comparing the number of diagnoses made in 2020 compared with those in recent years.

Of course, people are still getting cancer – it is just that they have not so far been diagnosed. By the time they are diagnosed their chances of survival will have diminished.

NOT all these missed cancer cases can be blamed on the NHS. Some will be down to the reluctance of patients themselves to seek help. Ministers have repeatedly emphasised that the NHS is still open for non-Covid emergencies, and I have to say that when my wife was worried about breast cancer she was seen very efficiently and given a scan which put our fears at ease.