“If MLAs want to make a difference to cancer outcomes, they will need to stay with the issue long after the chamber moves on to its next item of business.”
There is a point in almost every conversation about cancer care in Northern Ireland when things change. Someone mentions how long they had to wait, and the whole room seems to sag. It is the part nobody forgets. The stretch of time between a GP referral and seeing a specialist. The long days between diagnosis and treatment. That uncomfortable space where people spend far too long sitting with fear.
Stormont is due to discuss this again when the DUP’s Diane Dodds and Alan Robinson bring their motion on cancer waiting times to the Assembly on Tuesday. It comes more than a month after the latest figures were released on 2nd October.
The figures from April to June have had time to settle, but they have not become any easier to look at. Only 32.5 per cent of people who started cancer treatment after an urgent GP referral began within the 62 day target. The target is 95 per cent. This statistic alone is staggering, and the target feels more like a distant memory of what the system used to be capable of.
The 31 day standard, which kicks in once a patient has agreed a treatment plan with their doctor, is holding up better, but not well enough. It sits at 87.9 per cent. On paper, that looks respectable beside the 62-day figure, but the target is 98 per cent. Nearly 300 people waited longer than the system says they should have. Behind every percentage is someone trying to keep their life together while they wait for treatment to begin.
The breast cancer figures are even more jarring. In the Belfast, Northern and South Eastern Trusts, only 6.6 per cent of urgent patients were seen within 14 days. That is astonishing when you see it written down. Referrals have gone up, but the proportion seen on time has gone down. In any other part of the UK, this would dominate front pages. Here it arrived with a grim familiarity.
Some of the disruption is down to the new encompass digital record system, which is rolling out across Trusts. The Department of Health has been clear that not all the data is fully validated yet and that some of it sits in an “in development” category. That is fair enough, but the caviats do not change the basic picture. It is clear that waits are still far too long and the system is still struggling to keep pace with need.
The motion going before the Assembly sets out the wider context. Northern Ireland has the lowest one-year survival for pancreatic and ovarian cancer anywhere in the UK. Early diagnosis rates have remained largely unchanged over the past decade. Studies show that a delay of just four weeks can increase the risk of death by up to eight per cent. This tells us what the waits actually mean for people who are already fighting for their health.
But motions alone will not shorten a single waiting list. They can set out expectations, but they do not fix the problems. That responsibility sits with the Minister of Health, and a system that has been running on too little for too long. The motion calls for more capacity, proper delivery of the Elective Care Framework and the long-promised Cancer Research Strategy.
Stormont has a habit of developing effective strategies and then allowing them to gather dust. The cancer strategy, which covers the period from 2022 to 2032, was full of sensible proposals, many of them shaped by the voices of people who live with cancer every day. Progress has been slow, not because the ideas are wrong, but because the system has been stretched to its limits and politics has been distracted.
The point of Tuesday’s debate is not to produce another round of well-meaning speeches. It is to demand follow-through. If MLAs want to make a difference to cancer outcomes, they will need to stay with the issue long after the chamber moves on to its next item of business. That means proper scrutiny of Trust capacity. It means realistic timelines for recovery. It means the development of a Cancer Research Strategy, which has been discussed for so long.
Cancer outcomes improve when political focus matches clinical reality. The figures published last month served as a reminder of how far we still have to go. People waiting on treatment do not need sympathy. They need speed. They need honesty. And they need action.
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