Potentially deadly tumours are being ignored as bureaucrats wrestle with red tape put in place this month. Consultants? requests for radiotherapy funding have gone unanswered so they cannot refer patients for treatment.
Karol Sikora, former cancer adviser to the World Health Organisation, said: ?This is outrageous. It is completely wrong to make people wait because the bureaucracy isn?t in place.
?Patients should be treated and then a review carried out later, otherwise their condition could become untreatable during the delay.?
The delays make a mockery of the Prime Minister?s pledge last October that specialist radiotherapy treatment would be offered to all those who need it. Announcing a ?15million fund to improve radiotherapy services in England, David Cameron said: ?This is going to help thousands of people at one of the hardest times of their lives.?
Yet in London alone 31 patients are waiting for gamma knife radio-surgery, a life-saving radiotherapy treatment that can destroy cancerous and non-cancerous brain tumours with minimal risk to healthy tissue.
At least 12 of these patients are at risk of life-threatening haemorrhages.
One is Phillip Sydborne, 58, a father of two from Pimlico, south London. A?brain tumour near his right ear is gradually making him deaf, giving him headaches and causing problems with his balance.
He said: ?The timing of the decision to offer me surgery has been mixed up with the changes to NHS funding. The system isn?t working. I wonder what is happening to this multi-million pound gamma knife machine while we all wait.? Last night Lib Dem MP Tessa Munt said: ?The Prime Minister guaranteed that patients who needed this kind of innovative radiotherapy would get it from April 1.
?Delays like this are life-threatening. He needs to get a grip on the bureaucracy if patients? lives are not to be put at risk in this way.?
Leading neurosurgeon Andras Kemeny, who advises NHS health officials on which patients are eligible for radio-surgery, said: ?I feel frustrated. The new system may work in the future but it is not working now and it is wrong that patients should have to wait.?
James Palmer, national clinical director for specialised services at NHS England, admitted there had been problems but said they they were being addressed.
Source: http://www.express.co.uk/news/health/395308/NHS-reforms-will-kill-cancer-patients
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