Cancer: Death
(asked on 10th October 2025) - View Source
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how many NHS patients died from cancer within three months of diagnosis in each of the last five years.
The National Disease Registration Service in NHS England is the cancer registry for England and collects data on the diagnosis and treatment of cancer patients. The service is available at the following link:
The following table shows the number of people who died within three months of their cancer diagnosis:
Diagnosis year | Number of patients who died within three months of diagnosis |
2018 | 41,647 |
2019 | 39,973 |
2020 | 41,599 |
2021 | 41,878 |
2022 | 41,228 |
Source: NHS England Digital
Notes: Using the methodology from the Accredited Official Statistics on Cancer Registrations, the number of people who died within three months of their cancer diagnosis were counted. People who died on the same day as they were diagnosed were not included in the counts, as the vast majority of these are cases where the only indication of their cancer is their death certificate and their true date of diagnosis is not known. Many of the others are incidental findings at death. The statistics are available at the following link: https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/cancer-registration-statistics/england-2022
My rt. Hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, has announced that a National Cancer Plan for England will be published in 2026. The Prime Minister’s health mission sets the objective of building a National Health Service fit for the future, and an essential part of this is achieving our goal to reduce the number of lives lost to cancer. The National Cancer Plan will have patients at its heart and will cover the entirety of the cancer pathway, from referral and diagnosis to treatment and ongoing care- as well as prevention and research and innovation. It will seek to improve every aspect of cancer care to better the experience and outcomes for people with cancer. Our goal is to reduce the number of lives lost to cancer over the next ten years. This will benefit all cancer patients, including pancreatic cancer patients.