00:00This is really important because ever since we've been recording the stage at which we
00:04diagnose people's cancer this is the first time that we've seen it going up as we've
00:08come out of the pandemic and we've put a huge amount of effort into making sure that people
00:13can understand the symptoms so that they know when to come forward to get checks and also we've been
00:18doing some work to actually go out and find people for example with our lung health checks program
00:22targeting people over the age of 55 who've smoked seeing if they are at risk of lung cancer and
00:28inviting them in for CT scans and it's these kind of initiatives which have made a huge difference
00:33to the likelihood of getting diagnosed early and of course that really matters because
00:37if your cancer is diagnosed in early stage that's what gives us the best chance of successful
00:42treatment. We're doing everything we can to speed this up and in fact the figures this year are much
00:46better than they were last year and we're continuing to work on that. People shouldn't
00:50be waiting a long time to start treatment if they are they need to speak to the team that
00:53are looking after them to make sure that they're being prioritized in the system and even as
00:58we deal with all the winter pressures on the NHS we've asked hospitals around the country
01:02to continue to prioritize cancer tests and cancer treatment because as you say it's really
01:06important that people especially when they've got a diagnosis of cancer get treated as rapidly as
01:11possible and that's something that we're very strongly focused on. The numbers are getting
01:15better we've still got a long way to go in terms of catching up to where we'd like to be
01:20by the end of this year around 70 percent of people will be getting treatment within two
01:23months of referral we want to get to 85 which is what we're aiming for over the next couple of years.
Comments