Radiotherapy specialist, Cancer Partners UK, is lobbying MPs and health officials about the “poor state of radiotherapy services in the UK”.
The company has published a comprehensive report, Radiotherapy – A radical plan for Britain, co-authored by Professor Karol Sikora, with input from senior oncologists, which demonstrates how the UK has fallen behind with uptake of new technology, such as IMRT and IGRT. The Cancer Partners UK report coincides with the publication of a report by Cancer Research UK – Poor Public Awareness Highlights Radiotherapy’s Cinderella Status – which states that there is a general lack of awareness by the public of how good radiotherapy is at treating cancer. Despite the number of people receiving radiotherapy in the UK increasing by 75% since 2000, 12% of cancer patients who might benefit from radiotherapy will not receive it. The report says that UK healthcare Trusts are failing to offer equal opportunities for patients to receive radiotherapy. Rupert Cockcroft, CEO of Cancer Partners UK, commented: “Poor value is attached to radiotherapy as a major cancer treatment, and there is serious underprovision of radiotherapy in certain parts of the country resulting in a postcode lottery.”
