11,000 hidden breast cancer victims of virus
MARTIN BAGOT Health Editor NEARLY 11,000 people could be living with undiagnosed breast cancer due to NHS disruption caused by coronavirus.
Breast Cancer Now estimates 10,700 fewer cases were picked up from March to December 2020 than would have been if there was no pandemic.
It comes after breast cancer
screening was paused and wait times for checks soared while the NHS focused on Covid-19.
The charity warns some of those who have cancer without currently knowing will die early as understaffed diagnostic departments face being “overwhelmed” by the backlog.
Chief executive Baroness Delyth Morgan said: “The tragic
cost of almost 11,000 missing diagnoses is that in the worst cases, women could die.
“While we cannot know the full impacts of the pandemic, what we do know is over the coming years the number of women coming forward could overwhelm our already overstretched workforce.
“Women with breast cancer have already paid an unacceptable price due to the pandemic – we simply cannot afford for any more time to pass before UK Governments invest in and tackle the crisis facing the cancer workforce.”
The charity estimates around 1.2 million fewer women were screened in 2020 than in the previous 12 months.
NOTHING happened yesterday. Let me tell you all about it.
It was like all previous lockdown days. I woke up just after 5am, about normal, and listened to the Shipping Forecast, imagining some of the places I know.
Like Gibraltar Point, which ought to be in the Mediterranean but actually sits on a little tidal river south of Skegness. Didn’t know that, did you?
I keep the bedside radio on all night, tuned to Radio 4, in the small hours the
World Service. It broadcasts fascinating stuff. But for three hours from 6am, in or out of bed, I am an addict of the Today Programme. It is the daily paper of the airwaves, required reading for a scribbler.
I stay faithful despite the irritating vanity of the presenters. John Humphrys may be long gone, but viral humphrytis is still rampant. “What you’re saying is…” when it’s quite often nothing of the sort.
“I’m sorry to interrupt…” when they are nothing of the sort. It’s a point-scoring tournament not a dialogue.
I always shave – disposable plastic razor – as soon as I get up. I feel undressed if I haven’t gone through that ritual.
Breakfast is coffee, toast and marmalade, or porridge with water from the microwave. Then it’s time for work. I’m usually at my laptop by 8am, pecking at the keys like an old hen. Not with the left forefinger, that’s riddled with arthritis.
When I’m satisfied with my 300-word columnette, off it goes by email to my editors Nick and Clare, who are also working from home.
Hang on, it’s not even 10 o’clock in the morning and I’ve used up my allotted word length.
And I said nothing happened?