Canadian experts to help with cancer plans

HEALTH chiefs have drafted in Canadian specialists to help draw up the long-awaited national cancer strategy amid concerns at the pace of progress on the plan.

Experts from the British Columbia Cancer Agency (BCCA) are working with Health Service Executive (HSE) staff to formulate the National Cancer Control Programme promised by Health Minister Mary Harney last June.

Ms Harney came in for criticism at the time for announcing an outline of the programme without including any detail on how it would be funded or how and when it would be implemented.

A key element of the programme was to be the reorganisation of cancer services into eight regional “centres of excellence”, each serving a population of 500,000, but without the detail of how this would be achieved, opposition parties described the plan as high on aspiration but low on specifics.

Since handing over responsibility for the programme to the HSE, there is still no implementation plan in place and no cost estimates have been made public. Neither has the process of recruiting a senior administrator begun. It has emerged, however, that HSE bosses have sought the help of the BCCA, which co-ordinates all cancer services for Canada’s westernmost province.

The HSE said it had signed a memorandum of understanding with the BCCA which was acknowledged to be a “world leading cancer control programme”. It continued: “Senior BCCA staff are working closely with HSE project staff to bring the cancer control programme into being.”

Although covering a much larger land area, British Columbia’s population of 4.3 million is close in size to Ireland’s. It has just more than 20,000 new cancer cases a year, slightly below the Irish rate of 22,000, but the anticipated rate of increase is much less than in Ireland where the National Cancer Registry predicts a doubling of cases by 2020.

The province had the first organised cervical cancer screening programme in the world and has had a breast cancer screening programme for all women over 40 since 1988. Ireland is still rolling out breast cancer screening, for women over 50, and is only beginning to implement a nationwide cervical cancer screening programme.

The BCCA co-ordinates all cancer prevention, detection, treatment and palliative care programmes for the province, as well as counselling, therapy and rehabilitation services, education for doctors and research into the disease. Services are organised around four large regional centres, with a fifth in planning; as well as 25 community-based cancer centres and 12 consultative clinics.

Ms Jane Bailey, of the Cancer Care Alliance, which represents communities campaigning for improved cancer services, said, however, there was little reason to believe real change was on the way.

“We’ve had plans before, but what we haven’t had is action,” she said. “What is happening now is that once again we have lip service. The Budget only allocated €3.5 million for the national cancer control programme this year. That will only buy more reports.”

The HSE said it would be recruiting a director of cancer control “shortly”.