Andrew Lansley: “If we were to achieve the European average on outcomes we would save 5,000 lives a year”
Ministers in England are setting out their plans to improve cancer care in a bid to bring survival rates up to European averages.
The Cancer Strategy focuses on early diagnosis, saying this is the key to saving an extra 5,000 lives a year.
More than £450m is being promised to give GPs better access to early tests, including brain scans and chest x-rays.
It comes after a series of announcements on cancer recently by the coalition government.
Setting out the plans, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley said: “Our ambition is simple, to deliver survival rates among the best in Europe and this strategy outlines how we will make our first steps towards this.
He added: “Our commitment is to save 5,000 extra lives a year from 2014/15 and that is what we will be measuring our success against.”
At the moment, patients are guaranteed to see a cancer specialist within two weeks if they get an urgent referral from their GP.
The coalition government has promised to keep this target, which was set by Labour, as they say it is clinically justifiable.
However, they believe GPs should have better direct access to testing for those patients who are not classed as urgent but could benefit from further investigation.
To achieve this they are freeing up money to improve access to chest x-rays, ultrasounds and MRI brain scans.
Doctors can already send patients for these tests, but there are often delays.
The strategy also contains details on a number of initiatives already announced.
These include the plans to roll out sigmoidoscopy screening for bowel cancer, the £200m cancer drugs fund for treatments not routinely funded by the NHS and increasing the number of cancer specialists.
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