Mary Glindon MP: Supporting the fight against cancer

The pharmaceutical company, Roche recently launched a detailed report in Parliament on older people’s cancer care entitled ‘Achieving Appropriate Cancer Care for All Ages’ and which I attended.

Their report investigates the impact that age can have on clinical decision-making in NHS cancer services. It finds that age can sometimes impact clinical decisions about surgery or treatment, with older people sometimes not considered suitable for certain interventions.

It makes recommendations to ensure that all older people receive individualised and appropriate cancer care to improve their experiences and outcomes.

It makes three main points. All older people should receive a frailty assessment to inform their care. There should be support in the community for 'pre-habilitation' to hopefully reduce side effects and complications from treatment, and to enhance recovery. Care should be moved closer to people's homes, such as in the community, wherever appropriate, to avoid lengthy trips to and time spent in hospital.

The Institute of Cancer Research has also told me that it has discovered that a protein linked to prostate cancer is associated with more aggressive disease and this protein could be a new target for treatment which could help predict those who will become resistant to hormone therapy.

I will feed these and other points to colleagues in government to inform its 10-year plan to radically reform the NHS and tackle the UK’s appreciably higher cancer mortality rates than other countries. The recent report by Lord Darzi also found that there was no progress whatsoever made in diagnosing cancer at stage one and two between 2013 and 2021. We can and must do better on the scourge of cancer.

Mary Glindon is Labour MP for Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend