Neuroendocrine Cancer in UK – a growing crisis?

I was delighted to read about the efforts of Dr Arthur Scott, a Member of the UK Parliament (MP).  He is a great advocate for cancer patients and recently introduced a rare cancer bill in the UK Parliament which will hopefully make a difference. The content was very interesting and I was drawn to several parts of his submission.  Firstly, the description of ‘rare’ as a ‘dangerous misnomer’ when applied to a cancer which is now more prevalent than better known cancers such as Stomach and Pancreatic. He went on to say this is not a niche health concern, but a rapidly growing challenge that the NHS is ill equipped to meet – cue the justification for the use of the term ‘crisis’ which I borrowed for the blog title.

I was also interested to read his comments on accurate data which is clearly hiding the real incidence (and therefore probably prevalence) – something I have been very vocal on for the last 10 years.  I prompted Dr Scott in a comment on his Facebook page, to consider that the sheer quantity of Neuroendocrine Cancer diagnoses has overtaken UK healthcare processes to the point that it has become recognised as the 10th most common cancer thanks to the work of Neuroendocrine Cancer UK and NHS England.

Dr Scott suggested that while the UK has 13 accredited Centres of Excellence, access to them is inconsistent for those in rural areas. I know many of my readers from USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand; will know about distance difficulties! Clearly there’s still room for improvement in smaller countries too. What I didn’t expect was the statement that Neuroendocrine Cancer is in crisis in UK. But I get it because it reminded me that I had some luck in 2010 when I had a win on the postcode lottery, a term Dr Scott used in his Parliamentary submission. I had access within 15 minute drive from my home.  Clearly everybody should be wining that lottery and I will try harder to support people in UK going forward.

Thanks for reading

You can read the Member of Parliament’s Facebook post and my comment by clicking here.

You can go direct to his article in the UK Parliament newspaper – click here.

Kind regards

Ronny Allan