Rishi Sunak has insisted an expansion of lung cancer screening will save thousands of lives after a report found the NHS is performing “substantially less well” on life expectancy than foreign health services.
The Government has announced a nationwide rollout of a pilot scheme that encourages people to get on-the-spot chest scans in trucks that operate from supermarket car parks.
The initiative is aimed at increasing the number of lung cancer cases diagnosed early in order to improve prognosis.
The Prime Minister defended the measures after a report by The King’s Fund found that the NHS “lag(s) behind our peers” on healthcare outcomes including cancer and is “not by any means where we should be”.
“As well as our immediate priority to invest record sums in the NHS to cut waiting lists, I want to make sure that the NHS is fit for the future,” he said during a visit to one of the health screening facilities in Nottinghamshire.
“Today’s announcement – the expansion of lung cancer screening – is a good example of that.
“Lung cancer is the leading cause of death by cancer in the UK and we know that if you catch it early then you can much more improve the chances of people surviving it.”
He said the pilot scheme, which was initially targeted, had made an “enormous difference” and on being rolled out nationally would “save thousands of people’s lives”.
Pressed about the findings of The King’s Fund report, the Prime Minister conceded that there is “work to do” but insisted he could “fix” outstanding issues.
Health Secretary Steve Barclay, who spoke with reporters following Mr Sunak, refused to say whether the number of cancer deaths could be linked to austerity policies pursued by the Conservatives during the past 13 years.
Asked whether spending cuts were one of the reasons behind deprivation and poor health, he said: “There’s a range of factors why this programme is targeted in communities like this, it’s because there are high rates of smoking and we know there are often high rates of smoking in deprived communities, and that is what this programme enables us to do, is to target the checks together with early intervention into the most deprived communities.”
The King’s Fund report found that the UK is significantly lagging behind its peers in terms of cancer survival rates, one of several factors dragging down life expectancy.
The NHS performs poorly on healthcare outcomes across several different major disease groups and health conditions linked to avoidable mortality, according to the report.
It had the fourth and second highest rates of preventable and treatable mortality in 2019 among the 19 health systems in the report, with 119 deaths and 69 deaths per 100,000 people respectively.
Siva Anandaciva, the report’s author and chief analyst at The King’s Fund, said at a briefing: “On healthcare outcomes specifically, both for the outcomes that a system can control and those wider measures that rely on services that keep us healthy… we lag behind our peers. We are not by any means where we should be.”
