Editorial: Factors such as Covid play role in cancer backlog

Another poor set of health delay statistics was released in Northern Ireland yesterday.The cancer data from the Department of Health found a slight improvement in the percentage of patients commencing their first treatment for cancer within the 31 day target after a decision to treat being taken, 89% up from 88% in the previous quarter.

But there was a decline in performance when it came to waiting times for first treatment following an urgent GP referral for suspect cancer (62 day target). The final quarter of last year only 36% of patients had begun such treatment, down from 39.5% the previous quarter and 43.2 in the same quarter the year before.

There was however an increase in the percentage of patients first seen following an urgent referral for suspect breast cancer outside the 14 day target,

Calling the missed targets "extremely disappointing”, the Department of Health said waiting times for assessment and “treatment for cancer was increasing before the pandemic and this has been exacerbated in the past three years”.

Today there will be further strikes in the health service, helping to add to a sense of government cruelty over the NHS. But there are other key factors in the health crisis. The first is the role that lockdown has played in greatly disrupting other urgent health care, particularly specialties like cancer. Through lockdown the world renowned oncologist Professor Karol Sikora flagged up this risk of people declining assessment because they had imbibed a fear of diverting care from the Covid response.

Another perhaps bigger problem is Stormont. For all the clamour for MLAs to return, they were notably cowardly over NHS provision, resisting the reform of the NHS that experts have been seeking for two decades, because they feared being seen to be encouraging cuts.