Cancer care - State must tackle this disease now

Despite the fact that the incidence of cancer is expected to practically double in the country over the next 14 years, a national strategy on the disease — the second — launched last year remains in limbo.

The strategy was made the responsibility of the Health Service Executive (HSE) which was to devise an action plan over eight weeks to implement it, when it was launched by Health Minister Mary Harney.

When it was launched, the strategy was based on a document drawn up by the National Cancer Forum. It recommended that in future cancer care should be catered for at eight centres around the country on a regional basis, each serving a population of about one million people.

Pointedly, Ms Harney said at that time that it was “excessive” that cancer treatment was provided at 35 hospitals, although she declined to nominate which should cease to provide the treatment.

That was last June, and little has happened since then except that the HSE has consulted with a Canadian agency which coordinates all cancer services for British Columbia which has a population comparable to that of Ireland’s.

While that Canadian model appears to have been successful, there is no national strategy here, and one seems unlikely in the very near future.

A national director has yet to be appointed to oversee a national plan and neither have costings been produced to show how it will be provided.

It is no coincidence that a general election is looming and any streamlining of cancer treatment would more than likely see some local hospitals lose out, resulting in very unpopular and unwelcome decisions.

Given that about 20,000 people in Ireland develop cancer annually, and 7,500 people die from it, there is an urgency to tackle the disease on a basis which can produce the best results.

That decision should be taken irrespective of the election.