Cancer

(asked on 11th September 2017) - View Source

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what progress has been made by NHS England on implementing recommendations 10, 11 and 64 of the Cancer Strategy for England since its publication in May 2016.


Answered by
Steve Brine Portrait
Steve Brine
This question was answered on 9th October 2017

In January 2016, the United Kingdom National Screening Committee (UK NSC) recommended that cytological screening should be replaced with the human papilloma virus (HPV) primary screening test as the first line of screening within UK national cervical screening programmes. Six providers are piloting primary testing for HPV within the National Health Service National Cervical Screening Programme in England, and NHS England has been working in partnership with Public Health England (PHE) to determine the most clinically safe and effective way of implementing this change into the programme by the end of December 2019. The UK NSC reviews its recommendations regularly, usually on a three year cycle.

On the advice of the UK NSC, NHS England is introducing a new easier to use home testing screening kit, which supports early diagnosis of bowel cancer from April 2018. Faecal Immunochemical Test (FIT) for haemoglobin will replace Faecal Occult Blood testing (FOBt) from April 2018. FIT is likely to increase the uptake of bowel screening by 7%, as evidenced in the FIT pilot in England where the test was found to be more favourable for the public. FIT will contribute to the reduction of inequalities in screening and cancer outcomes. Upon implementation, NHS England will review the opportunities that general practitioners have to help maximise uptake of this screening programme amongst their population. Bowel Scope Screening continues to be rolled out with full roll out anticipated for 2020/21.

NHS England has worked with PHE, charities, academics, patients and carers to develop a new national metric on quality of life, based on the established Patient Reported Outcome Measures questionnaires, which will be tested in five Cancer Alliances from September 2017. Based on evaluation of the testing phase, national roll-out will begin in 2019.

Reticulating Splines