Più di 60.000 malati di cancro in Inghilterra “non ottengono la radioterapia necessaria”
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2025/oct/03/more-than-60000-cancer-patients-in-england-not-getting-any-radiotherapy-research-shows?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
di topotaul
11 commenti
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Chronic staff shortage due to, among other things, horrendously low wages.
Avg radiographer salary in the Netherlands is about £50k, here’s it’s closer to £35k unless you are lucky enough to get one of rare Band 6/7 posts.
Every Brit I know extols the healthcare system because it’s “free”. This is what happens when the government taxes and spends in order for a service to be free. It is unsustainable. (Libs of Reddit may attack me now.)
A couple of billion £ a year extra could do wonders for cancer screening in the most deprived parts of England.
From going to my gp to sitting down with an oncologist took me 12 weeks. Well over the recommendation timescale. That was after a year of symptoms and going to my gp who didn’t listen until I lost weight. It’s been failure upon failure. I was given 12-24 months to live 14 months ago
The NHS has been in collapse for a long time now, this is what trans people have been talking about, it’s what people who need mental health support have been talking about. Not being able to get a GP appointment is the tip of the iceberg, this will continue to get worse until the NHS is properly funded and pay is increased for it’s staff.
Once you start actual treatment then the quality of care is usually very good. The problem is there are delays getting referred by the GP. Then delays seeing a consultant. Then delays getting scans/biopsy results. Then delays accessing surgery.
By that point, stage 1/2 cancer has become stage 3/4 cancer and you may have missed the window where surgery will provide a positive outcome.
Every single person I know with cancer, and who didn’t go private, has faced delays well outside government guidelines.
Those who went private had timescales of 2-3 weeks before being on the waiting list for (NHS supplied) treatment to start. Everyone on the pure NHS process took 4-6 months to get to the same point to start treatment.
The initial delays in getting a purely NHS diagnosis often means they miss the window for curitive treatment and it ends up as palliative.
Part of it is the triage system. Some departments have sufficient staff but the staff feel they don’t have enough. Some departments have one staff that does everything and is more efficient than the well-staffed departments.
Well if you’d actually invest into oncology appointments and surgery slots, we wouldn’t have this situation.
I have colleagues bargaining for slots as they are so short of them. It’s almost like pitting one person against each other
But if the government so much as hint at a tax increase to pay for improving such things, then everyone looses their minds.
Cancer bad. Income tax worse, apparently.
I feel extremely lucky that I was seem so quickly with my cancer. The hardest part was getting the doctor’s receptionist to believe that a lump needed looking at. After that, it all went very fast. I had the biopsy results within 2 weeks of being referred by my doctor. After that, I had surgery, then chemo, then radiotherapy, all within the recommended timescales.
Cancer treatment has always been one of the priorities for the NHS, which is why other things can take a long time. It’s worrying if even that is now slipping.