Scottish cancer treatment targets not being met
 Less than half of all bowel cancer patients are getting treatment within the recommended time limit of two months, according to figures for the first quarter of 2005 released by the Scottish Executive, a fall of 10 per cent on the previous quarter.
Official figures released last month show that the percentage of bowel and ovarian cancer patients being seen within two months has dropped overall. Improvements in waiting times for lung, breast and skin cancer were only slightly better.
This comes as a disappointment and a shock as the Scottish Executive has invested £150 million and recruited hundreds of new staff in the past four years, following its pledge in 2001, that no patient suffering from one of the five ‘main’ cancers, who had been urgently referred by their GP, would wait longer than two months for treatment. The new figures show that overall only 73.3 of such patients were treated in time in the first quarter of this year.
The number of women waiting less than two months for treatment of ovarian cancer fell from 85.7 per cent to 78.9 per cent.
Waiting times have improved a little for breast cancer patients, with 86.3 per cent being treated within two months, up 1.5 per cent on the last quarter. For lung cancer the figure was up by 3.3 per cent to 71.8, while in the case of melanoma, 75 per cent of all patients were treated within eight weeks.
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