Front page of Daily Express today. If you have cancer, you shouldn’t have to worry about where you live having an impact on the care that you can access. Everyone living with cancer deserves to get the treatment that’s right for them and have access to the best care the UK has to offer. But this isn’t happening. Based on our research, we estimate that up to 1.4 million people with cancer are being failed by a lack of access to treatment options, long travel times, and long waiting lists. This is completely unacceptable. At Macmillan we’re working to bring decision-makers, people with cancer and local communities together to make sure that well-established cancer treatments and tests are made equally available to everyone. We must make cancer care fair for everyone – and it’s going to take us all working together.
I contacted MacMillan repeatedly for support when I had nobody else as you have a “relationship” with my bank, and heard nothing, just fyi while you’re on the topic.
Living in one of the worst areas of the UK for cancer outcomes (and health and wellbeing more generally) is a constant source of stress and, in extreme cases, avoidable grief. I won’t rest until there is fair and equal access to the gift of life for me and my community.
This really resonates with me. Having gone through cancer myself, I was staggered by the number of elderly people I saw travelling alone on buses to chemotherapy — exhausted before they even reached the hospital. Long travel times, waiting lists and postcode barriers are putting people at risk, and it’s heartbreaking. And after treatment, the inequality continues with little or no access to proper rehabilitation, even though we know it improves recovery and reduces recurrence. Cancer care must be fair — no one’s future should be dictated by where you live. This is a huge opportunity for change! Thank you Macmillan for shining a light on this!
it's not only the disparity in treatment but in the investigations needed to get onto treatment, the support or not from clinical nurse specialists, access to support services like Maggie's centres or other charities and any counselling and then any services like pulmonary rehabilitation and disparity in availability of hospice services. Too much is attributed to the patients living in socio-economic deprived areas rather than the current system design that only increases health inequalities then with travel, the digital divide - my GP practice sent a text last week to say everything is going online from 1/10 - how are those not connected, without broadband or skills to use such services meant to manage? Having spent a lot of time recently driving a very elderly patient around due to lack of paramedics, lack of appointments, yet another experience of driving to 4 separate pharmacies not having meds available only highlights how the system is currently not serving everyone who needs it desperately. Such a sad situation and one that merits urgent rethinking.... but with long term planning i.e. sometimes quick solutions only make things worse. .
Cancer treatment from the NHS feels like a lottery, your not given vital info, worst case scenario is order of the day, if you don't have the access to private, unless you have the gumption , strength & confidence to fight your case, outlook is bleak.
I completely agree with you Gemma - Sadly, where you live in the UK really does dictate the care you access. In my own journey, I had scans and key information hidden or purposefully downplayed, and only found out by doing patient record requests. It’s exhausting at a time when energy should be spent on healing and figiting the cancer, not the system. We need fair, consistent access to treatments and transparency for all patients. No one should have to fight the system as well as the cancer 💚
Well said Gemma Peters and keep up the great work you do. The problem is real and we need to work collaboratively to bridge the cancer care inequality gap.
This is the reality too many face. Its not just unacceptable, it’s unessesary and cruel. 💚
It’s terrible to think this is the reality for many patients. Travelling I fear is inevitable for people with rare cancers, it’s not possible to have experts in every cancer in every NHS trust . We need to mobilise patients and have a more steamlined, fluid service with regional and national centres if necessary for the rarer cancers. Mesothelioma UK and our team of expert nurses, each working in the NHS have established a replicable approach to achieving this. It’s affordable, dedicated to patients and completely committed to the NHS.
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2wExactly it's hard enough going through a cancer diagnosis, we also sadly have to advocate for ourselves also, which is hard enough when you are feeling good. Something needs to change as its not fair or right what cancer patients are having to put up with.