'Incredible inequality' in women's cancer screening, Northumberland councillors told
Healthcare bosses have warned that cancer is the biggest killer of women in the region.
This differs from the national picture, where cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death. Data from NHS England shows that the North East has the highest age-standardised cancer rate for women, at 603 per 100,000 people.
At Thursday’s meeting of Northumberland’s Health and Wellbeing Board, bosses at the North East and North Cumbria Integrated Care Board (ICB) explained that prevention and early detection of cancer was one of its four key priorities for women’s health.
The ICB’s director of women’s health, Siobhan Brown, said: “We have to get the foundations right. Cervical screening rates vary dramatically across all of our footprints, from 89% take-up in some areas down to to 35% in others.
“That is an incredible inequality that we seriously need to address. Another really big priority is catching people in stage one or two.
“Early detection will mean longer lives not in ill health. Women in the North East spend on average 21 years in ill health. People say men die earlier, and they do, but women live with ill health for a much longer period.”
Work to tackle the issue includes access to funded cancer prehabilitation, where patients are prepared for treatment before it starts.
Work is also ongoing to improve access and reduce inequalities in cervical screening as well as better access to substance misuse services.
Northumberland County Council’s cabinet member for healthy lives, Cllr Jeff Watson, questioned why deprived communities had worse access to healthcare.
He said: “In Northumberland, we have got various areas of deprivation and others where there’s less deprivation. The take-up in areas of deprivation, as you have pointed out, is very low.
“I have never understood that, because they are geographically rather a tight area, and the areas where there’s less are big geographical areas and they take it up.”
The council’s director of public health, Gill O’Neil, explained: “It is not only about the physical presence of a service being available, it is that acceptability of that service for people to feel it is for them and they can come forward and access it.
"It is wrapped up in a lot of cultural and support mechanisms and about how we can encourage people to access those services.”