Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to improve early diagnosis of ovarian cancer.

One of the core ambitions in the NHS Long Term Plan is to diagnose 75% of cancers at stage 1 or 2 by 2028, which would be an increase from the current rate of around 55%.

The National Health Service is implementing non-specific symptom (NSS) pathways for patients who do not fit clearly into a single ‘urgent cancer’ referral pathway but who are at risk of being diagnosed with cancer. 99 NSS pathways are currently operational across England, with more in development.

NHS England is running the ‘Help Us, Help You’ campaigns, which seek to address the barriers that are deterring patients from accessing the NHS. A campaign on abdominal and urological symptoms launched on 31 October 2022 and ran through to December 2022, directly addressing symptoms of ovarian cancer.