The NHS is on course to meet its target of a 20% reduction in the number of deaths due to cancer by 2010, but too many cancers still go undetected the first annual report on implementing reform in cancer services says.
The national Cancer Reform Strategy (CRS) aims to work at both national and local levels to improve the quality of cancer services over a five-year period until 2012.
Launching a report on its first full year the National Cancer Director professor Mike Richards said the latest data (the average for 2005-07) indicates that the England cancer mortality rate has fallen by 18% since 1995-97 and the inequalities gap has narrowed by 13%. This means that nearly 9,000 lives will have been saved in the under 75s in 2007 compared with 1996.
But Prof Richards also said that more work needs to be done to ensure that primary care is "fully engaged" in the CRS - "in particular in the challenge of ensuring early diagnosis".
And he wants the NHS to tackle the issues raised by the National Confidential Enquiry Patient outcome and Death (NCEPoD) report on systemic anti cancer therapy that revealed in some cases chemotherapy was inappropriate and that communication between general acute and specialist oncology services must improve.
Radiotherapy capacity must be increased in line with the requirements of the 2010 waiting time standard and Prof Richards wants more widespread use of laparoscopic surgery for colorectal cancer.
He also said health minister Sir Ari Darzi's report: High Quality Care For All, the final report of the Next Stage Review (NSR), published in June should provide an important boost for delivering the CRS objectives. It's emphasis on comprehensive wellbeing and prevention services, promoting personalised care plans for those with long-term conditions and empowering patients would all benefit the CRS. "But there needs to be effective coordination at local level between the work on the NSR and the work on implementation of the CRS."
Just as important was the publication of the End of Life Care Strategy, in July, which is aimed at improving quality of care for people approaching the end of their lives
Prof Richards said he would have liked to have seen "more and faster progress on implementation of the CRS" but in general terms he was satisfied that considerable progress has been made. He added:
"The proposals that I set out last month in Improving access to medicines for NHS patients will also help to ensure that a greater range of more expensive drugs are made available to more cancer patients on the NHS, reducing their need to seek private drugs. Together with new proposals from NICE, this will enable patients to have faster access to more life saving cancer drugs.
"It is vital that we carry on the progress we have made in the last year and I have identified with the CRS board our key priorities for the coming year including tackling delays in diagnosing cancer and improving the quality and safety of chemotherapy services."
Harpal Kumar, Chief Executive of Cancer Research UK said: "It is good to see so much improvement in cancer treatment but we still face a great challenge. We know that cancers are often being picked up too late and we could make an enormous difference if we could speed the process up.
"We hope that the range of measures we're launching with the national cancer director through the National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative will go a long way towards redressing the balance."
Key highlights of the first full year of the CRS:
* The launch of the National Awareness and Early Detection Initiative to pick up and treat cancer earlier.
* The launch of the National Cancer Survivorship Initiative which aims to ensure that the 1.6 million cancer survivors in England receive the integrated, quality services they need.
* The introduction of the HPV vaccine, which will protect women against the two strains of HPV which cause more than 70% of cervical cancer cases.
* The successful further rollout of bowel cancer screening 2,000 cancers have been detected since it began in 2006.
Health Minister Ann Keen said: "I welcome the first annual report which details the excellent progress the NHS has made in improving cancer outcomes and services. This is evident in the reduction we have seen in mortality rates and improvement in one-year survival rates. The challenge now is to keep up this momentum and ensure that we continue to make further improvements.
"We are committed to providing cancer patients with the best possible services to taking action to prevent cancer in the first place and to detecting it at the earliest possible point. The HPV vaccination programme, extensions of the bowel and breast screening programmes and a new national awareness and early diagnosis initiative will help to make this a reality."
Ciaran Devane, chief executive of Macmillan Cancer Support said the CRS has the potential to transform the quality of services for two million people living with cancer. "We remain confident that the strategy will be fully implemented by 2012 as long as it is given higher priority by the Government and NHS locally."