The UK announced a targeted lung cancer screening rollout designed to catch the disease sooner when treatment is more likely to be successful.
(Bloomberg) — The UK announced a targeted lung cancer screening rollout designed to catch the disease sooner when treatment is more likely to be successful.
The program, which the government said will cost £270 million ($343 million) per year, will target current or former smokers aged from 55 to 74 and is expected to detect as many as 9,000 cancer cases annually. The UK plans to conduct almost 1 million scans a year.
The announcement comes as Rishi Sunak’s government prepares to release more details this week on its 15-year training plan to expand the NHS’s workforce. Cutting waiting lists, which are at a record, is one of Sunak’s key pledges, a promise made more challenging by ongoing industrial action over pay from health workers.
Read more: UK’s Sunak Sees 15-Year NHS Training Plan as Waiting Lists Rise
The lung cancer screening program follows an initial phase which saw over 2,000 cancers detected out of 200,000 scans. Around three-quarters of those were caught at an earlier stage.
“While we focus on cutting waiting lists in the short term, we must also look to tackle some of the long-term challenging facing the NHS, including lung cancer which costs 35,000 lives every year,” Sunak said in the statement.
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