Announcing the new strategy, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care Steve Barclay said that “tackling” these conditions was “critical” to achieving the Government’s manifesto commitment of gaining five extra years of healthy life expectancy by 2035.
Instead of a specific cancer strategy, the new strategy will combine key commitments to mental health, cancer, dementia, and health disparities into a single, powerful strategy, he said.
Mr Barclay highlighted that strategies alone will not change outcomes, and that delivery of the plan will require a concerted effort from Government and the NHS working in tandem, alongside social care, patient representatives, industry and partners across the health and care system. There is no reference in the statement to how the upcoming plan will interact with the locally-determined priorities set by Integrated Care Systems, or if this plan will come with centralised or local funding.
Our Head of Stakeholder Relations Hugh Adams said: “We are disappointed that the Government has chosen to combine these major conditions and are concerned that plans from the 10-year strategy will be watered down. We have always maintained that innovation and adequately-funded discovery science must be central to any comprehensive cancer strategy. That is what patients, and their families deserve. In a combined strategy, we fear that the focus will be much less on research and much more on diagnosis, surgery, and primary care.”
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