Read text of the Prime Minister’s film on cancer care. Mr Blair said effective treatment of the disease is a top priority for the National Health Service and the Government.
Read the transctipt in full below:
There can hardly be a family in Britain which has not been touched by the shadow of cancer.
Thanks to huge advances in our treatment of the disease, cancer is no longer the death sentence it once was.
But it remains one of our biggest killers. One in four people die from the disease.
So preventing cancer and improving the early diagnosis and effective treatment of the disease is a top priority for the National Health Service and the Government.
The truth is that Britain did lag behind other countries on cancer services. They were under-resourced and under-staffed.
The result was that the gap between survival rates in Britain and many other developed countries was getting worse.
That’s changing- and changing fast.
Four years ago, we drew up the Cancer Plan with the help of NHS experts to transform Britain cancer services.
We have supported this blueprint with unprecedented investment, amounting to an extra £570 million for cancer services last year alone.
The result of this investment and, above all, the extraordinary talents and dedication of NHS staff is that deaths from cancer in the under-75s has fallen by 12% since 1996.
We have the fastest falling rates for premature deaths from lung cancer in men and breast cancer in women, across Europe.
But we can’t be complacent. We still have ground to make up – and this Government is determined we will.
It’s why we are introducing a national screening programme for bowel cancer within the NHS.
Bowel cancer is now the second largest cancer killer in men and women in England. It claims 14,000 lives a year.
Pilot studies we have already carried have shown that screening can, for this type of cancer, reduce deaths by 15%.
So Health Secretary John Reid has announced that the Government will invest £37.5 million over two years to fund a national NHS Bowel Cancer Screening programme to begin in April 2006.
It is first cancer screening programme in England for both men and women – and one of the first of its kind anywhere in Europe.
By helping the NHS detect and treat earlier this particularly dangerous type of cancer, the new screening programme will save hundreds of lives.
It is also a sign of the determination of the NHS to continue improving its care and services to patients.
A series of independent reports have confirmed this improvement right across the board in the health service.
The national bowel cancer screening programme underlines the commitment to renew the NHS so it offers truly world class services whatever the problem and wherever you live.
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