We Must Not Neglect Forgotten Patients Desperate For Care

With the worst of the pandemic hopefully past us, our wonderful NHS is functioning at 40 per cent capacity and if patients don’t go to hospital for health checks we could face 50,000 early cancer deaths by the end of summer.

- Tim Newark

That’s the grim reality of focusing almost exclusively on battling Covid-19.

When Imperial College London predicted that 500,000 Britons could die from it, wards were cleared, operations cancelled and Nightingale hospitals built. Tragically some 42,000 people have died but that is long off the predicted number and far lower than the 165,000 people who die from cancer every year, according to Cancer Research UK. Or the 69,000 who pass away from dementia or the 170,000 from heart and circulatory diseases – 44,000 of those dying under the age of 75.

Yet all patients suffering from those illnesses have seen their hospital appointments drastically cut or simply prefer not to turn up. Waiting lists have ballooned recently and could reach 10 million by the autumn.

“Thousands of people have early stage cancers that normally would be picked up and dealt with,” says cancer specialist Professor Karol Sikora. If this iceberg of ill health is not dealt with promptly, he predicts there could be 100,000 premature cancer deaths this year.