By Gordon McLean, Macmillan Cancer Support
IN the last five consecutive years, cancer waiting times targets have not been hit once across Scotland. To ensure we do not see a repeat of this worrying statistic long-term action is needed.
People with cancer deserve to begin treatment as quickly as possible. It is a simple equation. Severe delays can affect someone’s chances of survival and can impact on their ability to recover. Waiting long lengths of time are an unnecessary stress on someone who has just received a cancer diagnosis.
We need to understand what’s going wrong and how we can create a system that works.
Our hard-working doctors, nurses and staff over the Past five years must have felt boxed in with targets being missed and pressure mounting.
More people than ever before are getting cancer. Currently there are 220,000 people living with cancer in Scotland and this is expected to reach almost 400,000 by 2030. That means more people for tests and treatments. Equally, more people are surviving. While better survival rates are obviously a good thing, the NHS is struggling to support them. Finishing treatment does not mean someone has fully recovered. Many people will have physical, emotional and even financial issues as a result – problems that can last for years after treatment ends. We simply cannot continue to support people with cancer in the same way we always have, with no additional resource. It is time to think differently.
There are many lessons to be learnt from our £5 million Transforming Care After Treatment programme we funded in partnership with the Scottish Government. We want to do more to help the NHS and Scottish Government. There are many other charities and groups who can also bring expertise.
We cannot and should not lean on the generosity of our hardworking NHS staff. Failing to prepare for the future is preparing to fail the thousands more who will receive a cancer diagnosis in the next five years.
Gordon McLean works for Macmillan Cancer Support.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here