The Welsh Conservatives are calling for the Labour Government to introduce a cancer action plan – Wales being the only British nation without one – as it holds its debate on gynaecological cancer.
In the Senedd today, the official Opposition will also ask Labour ministers to urgently conduct a review into gynaecological cancer waiting times and ensure that workforce plans for cancer specialists have a focus on gynaecological health.
Commenting, Welsh Conservative leader Andrew RT Davies MS said:
“There is little doubt that the pandemic has accelerated inequalities in healthcare, and no more so than in female cancers, but we wouldn’t be in such a poor situation if we had a government with a strategy to tackle these deadly diseases.
“It is this total lack of foresight by Labour in Cardiff Bay – the only government in the UK without a proper cancer plan – that has placed women in such a perilous position, where the one-year and five-year survival rates for cancer of the uterus having dropped significantly over the last decade.
“Even before Covid, Wales was already behind other UK nations in terms of cancer survival rates. Since then, there have been thousands of misdiagnoses, not helped by a drop in 40,000 people going to hospital for cancer treatment in the first year of the pandemic due to lockdowns.
“Labour need to get a grip on the NHS and stop breaking all the wrong records.”
Other governments across the UK have published or consulted on cancer strategies which are far more comprehensive and targeted than the Labour Government in Cardiff Bay’s Cancer Quality Statement.
England’s Long Term Plan was published in 2018 and Scotland’s cancer strategy was launched in 2016, both added to with a Cancer Workforce Plan in the former and a cancer strategy for children and young people in the latter. Northern Ireland consulted on in its proposal in November 2021.
September marks Gynaecological Cancer Awareness Month, and the Welsh Conservatives wanted to highlight the poor health provision available to sufferers, with one-year and five-year survival rates for cancer of the uterus having dropped significantly over the last decade.
Additionally, the lowest single cancer pathway performance by tumour site is gynaecological, with less than a third of patients being seen within 62 days. This is exacerbated by 80% of women who work full-time unable to get to a convenient cervical screening appointment.
This has coincided with fewer women being checked regularly for gynaecological cancers. Pre-pandemic, cervical screening coverage was 73.2% across Wales for women aged 25-64, meaning 1-in-4 hadn’t been tested. Five year coverage for this age range in 2018/19 were at their lowest in 10 years at 75.7%.
Shockingly, the pandemic has hit cervical screening coverage further. In October 2021, Public Health Wales found that coverage for Wales fell to 69.5%, below the minimum service standard for coverage of 70%.