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Health Secretary Sajid Javid will today (4 February) declare a ‘national war on cancer’ as he tries to improve Britain’s poor survival rate for the disease. Javid will promise a Ten Year Cancer Plan to make England the best place in the world to receive cancer care. The plan will focus on early diagnosis enabling easier treatment, promoting healthier lifestyles to reduce chances of getting cancer, boosting staff numbers treating cancer, and more research into mRNA cancer vaccines.
Cancer remains the biggest cause of death from disease in the UK with survival rates lagging behind those of many other developed nations. COVID-19 has exacerbated the issue with nearly 50,000 fewer cancer diagnoses across the UK during the pandemic and NHS cancer treatments falling by 6%. The latest figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) show that there were 216 cancer deaths per 100,000 people in the UK in 2019, above the OECD average of 191. The UK also has far fewer diagnostic CT, MRI, and PET scanners with just 16 per million people compared to an average of 45 across the 38 OECD countries.
Javid will set out his vision, which calls for contributions from experts and patients, at the Francis Crick Institute in London to mark World Cancer Day. The strategy will look to build on the latest scientific advances, including more use of artificial intelligence, and to partner with the country’s ‘technology pioneers’. A public consultation on the plans will run for eight weeks with the plan expected to be published in the summer. Javid has also written a piece in the Daily Mail where he outlines his motivation to act given the loss of his father to cancer and elaborates on the new plan.
Source: Daily Mail, 4 February 2022
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New data from NHS Digital has shown that more adults and children in England are surviving for longer after being diagnosed with cancer. Increases in lifespan are being seen in almost all types of the disease, with survival for one year and five years rising among adults diagnosed between 2015 and 2019 compared with those whose illness was identified between 2006 and 2010.
The data shows that survival is highest in adults with melanoma of the skin, a main form of skin cancer. Nine in 10 men and 95% of women now survive melanoma for five years. The largest improvement in survival lengths has come in lung cancer in females, a rise of 1.6 percentage points per year. Increases were larger amongst children, with 93.4% of children up to the age of 14 diagnosed with cancer between 2002 and 2019 surviving for one year versus 90.7% in 2002 and 85% surviving for five years versus 77.8% in 2002. However, survival rates in adults for some other cancers, such as pancreatic, mesothelioma, and bladder cancer, did not rise significantly.
Experts say that improved cancer treatment and public awareness leading to earlier diagnosis is behind the improvements. Overall, about 375,400 people a year across the UK are diagnosed with cancer and about 166,533 die, according to statistics compiled by Cancer Research UK. Overall, 50% of people in England and Wales live for 10 years after diagnosis. Anna Jewell, chair of the Less Survivable Cancers Taskforce, warned however that survival rates for cancer remain variable: “We are not seeing the same improvements in prognosis for patients diagnosed with less survivable cancers, including those of the lung, liver, brain, oesophagus, pancreas and stomach.”
Source: The Guardian, 4 February 2022
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Five of Boris Johnson’s advisors have quit their roles, in what critics have called “meltdown in Downing Street”. Elena Narozanski, special advisor to the prime minister on women and equalities, is the latest to have quit, joining policy chief Munira Mirza, chief of staff Dan Rosenfield, Prime Minister's principal private secretary Martin Reynolds, and director of communications Jack Doyle.
The most high-profile departure is Mirza, who resigned on Thursday afternoon after Johnson again declined to apologise for attempting to smear the Labour leader Keir Starmer over the case of paedophile Jimmy Savile. In a blistering letter, Mirza, who had worked with Johnson for 14 years since his time as London mayor, called the allegation “scurrilous”. The three other resignations were then announced in quick succession in what was widely seen as an attempt to regain control.
Johnson has been under pressure since the Met Police announced it would investigate gatherings in Downing Street and Whitehall during lockdown. More than 10 MPs have publicly called on Johnson to resign with others saying they had sent letters calling for a vote of no confidence in his leadership and more thought to have done so privately. Johnson has replaced Mira with ally Andrew Griffith, a wealthy former Sky executive who will head up Johnson’s policy unit.
Source: The Guardian, 4 February 2022
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New preliminary research to be presented at the American Stroke Association’s International Stroke Conference 2022 has found that the more that people over 60-years-old smoke, the worse they do on cognitive tests, even when other health conditions affecting cognition are accounted for.
The research used national data on 3,244 adults over 60-years-old collected by the US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, an ongoing national health database. High blood pressure was present in 77% of the participants, type 2 diabetes in 24% of the participants, and current smoking status was self-reported by 23% of the participants with an objective measure also taken by blood tests. Each participant took four tests used to measure cognitive function, involving recall, fluency, processing speed, attention, and memory.
The analysis found that higher blood cotinine levels (a proxy for smoking status) were associated with significantly worse scores on the test used for processing speed, attention, and memory, but were not associated with significant differences on scores on tests measuring memory or language fluency. It found that the association between higher cotinine levels and lower scores on the first test was comparable to the association among those with high blood pressure or Type 2 diabetes, which are also known to affect cognition. A key finding was that smoking does not act in synergy with these risk factors to affect cognition, but independently of them.
Source: Scienmag, 3 February 2022
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Joe Biden has committed to reducing the cancer death rate in the US by 50% within 25 years as a new target for the “moonshot” initiative first announced in 2016 when he was vice-president.
Speaking on Wednesday (2nd February), Biden noted that cancer has accounted for more deaths across the pandemic than COVID-19 itself, at around 800,000 deaths attributed to COVID-19 versus around 1.2 million with cancer in the US. The American Cancer Society estimates that there will be 1,918,030 new cancer cases and 609,360 cancer deaths in the US this year. Biden’s strategy will aim to save more than 300,000 lives annually, which the administration believes is possible as the age-adjusted death rate has already fallen by roughly 25% over the past two decades. The issue is personal for Biden as he lost his eldest son Beau to brain cancer in 2015.
As part of the moonshot, Biden will assemble a “cancer cabinet” that includes 18 federal departments, agencies, and offices, including leaders from the Departments of Health and Human Services, Veterans Affairs, Defense, Energy, and Agriculture. Biden called on Congress to fund his newly proposed ‘Arpah’, or the Advanced Research Project Agency for Health, a new entity within the National Institute of Health with “autonomy and authorities to drive unprecedented progress in biomedicine”. He also called on the private sector to make drugs more affordable and further share data and knowledge to better inform the public and “benefit every company’s research”.
Biden also urged the public and healthcare officials to “get cancer screenings back on track and make sure they’re accessible”, with over 9 million cancer screenings missed because of COVID-19.
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Malaysian Health Minister Khairy Jamaluddin has said that his government will push ahead with plans for a generational ban on tobacco and smoking products. Responding to questions on the ambitiousness of the measure, Jamaluddin said other tobacco control measures being pursued in Malaysia, like curbing illicit tobacco, remained important but that they would not stop the government from going further and pursing a generational ban, as announced in New Zealand.
Jamaluddin also pointed to new figures showing that cancer is amongst the leading causes of death in private hospitals in Kuala Lumpur, with 35% of such deaths caused by cancer. He cited the high prevalence of lung cancer and lung cancer deaths in Malaysia and noted the significance of tobacco use as a major risk factor for this disease.
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In this new episode, Assistant Professor Jamie Hartmann-Boyce talks with Dr Sharon Cox, Senior Research Fellow at the Department for Behavioural science and Health from University College London’s Tobacco and Alcohol Research Group, about her team’s randomised controlled trial into the effectiveness of e-cigarettes for people experiencing homelessness who smoke. In the study, funded by National Institute for Health Research (NIHR), people based in homeless centres in the UK who smoked were offered e-cigarettes and the results analysed.
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This document outlines details of all of HMRC’s policy meetings with tobacco stakeholders between October and December 2021, as per the UK’s obligations regarding interactions with the tobacco industry under Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control.
See also: WHO - Guidelines for implementation of Article 5.3 of the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control
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NICE is requesting submissions for a topic engagement exercise on smoking quality standards. NICE requests feedback on five key areas for quality improvement, national or routine indicators and performance measures, examples of published information on current practice (such as, reports of variation in care or service provision, evaluations of compliance with source guidance, or patient, carer, or service user experience) to support the identified areas for quality improvement, and expressions of interest in being a supporting organisation.
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The Scottish Government has launched a consultation into rules on the advertising and promotion of vaping products. The consultation considers the visibility of vaping products for children, young people, and adult smokers, but not to smokers, for whom the Scottish government supports the use of e-cigarettes as an alternative to smoking. The consultation considers proposals to restrict the advertising of such products on billboards, advertising hoardings, buses, and other vehicles, through the distribution of leaflets and flyers, and via adverts on moving video apparatus, as well as the distribution of free or cut-price samples, and the sponsorship of activities, events, or people.
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ASH Daily News is a digest of published news on smoking-related topics. ASH is not responsible for the content of external websites. ASH does not necessarily endorse the material contained in this bulletin.
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