His own government’s cuts meant former health secretary’s bowel cancer was detected late by NHS
Andrew Lansley spent years planning ways to take healthcare away from people who need it.
Sorry if it seems insensitive, but this is what happens when you prioritise profit over service in healthcare.
Fair play to Lansley for using the NHS (he can certainly afford to go private and has many friends among the profit-making companies) – but many might say his late diagnosis is poetic justice.
This is especially true as the current screening programme for bowel cancer is available only on a ‘postcode lottery’ basis. It’s a microcosm of what the whole health service would become if it were to be handed over entirely to private firms, as the Conservative government desires.
Nobody deserves to have substandard healthcare. Perhaps that point will be hammered home to Mr Lansley, now he knows what it is like.
Former Conservative health secretary Andrew Lansley has revealed he has bowel cancer, and has called on the government to improve the NHS’s current screening programme for the disease.
Lord Lansley, who served in the cabinet under David Cameron, has stage 3 bowel cancer, but has said there is “every reason to hope” he will survive the illness long-term.
As health secretary, the 61-year-old helped launch the “bowelscope” screening programme for people over 54, but governments cuts, a lack of endoscopists and problems with IT systems have hampered the system’s delivery, currently only available to around half of the population, Lansley told the Daily Telegraph.
Source: Andrew Lansley calls for better NHS screening after revealing bowel cancer | Society | The Guardian
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Ouch!! I hear that is the most agressive and painful csncers around!
I hope he recovers, whether or not he gets this government to change it’s health policy!
Though I think he might now go private for treatment.
yes well if the conservative party actually stopped wasting gp’s time with fitness to work medicals and actually allowed gp’s to practice early detection rates would go up, however no I am being silly we have the big 3, one of them who cured a person’s dementia so well I am going to ask them to write to the lancet about how they managed gto do it with a 5 week training course, despite all the millions that go into it, sadly for the person that carried out that assessment I am a dementia trained volunteer and take people out with the condition, one of my bug bears is unfit health care professionals so I suggest they walk before there pushed, thatt applies to lord fraud, ian smith and the rest of the hangers on that think they really should be something I hope in may they get a shafting they deserve
Lucky for him that he can choose to go private. many of us cannot afford to even buy the medicines we are prescribed.
What goes around comes around. but in this case there could possibly have been divine interference … by that i mean, if he continues to use the NHS for his treatment, he will be in a position to see for himself what the “lower” citizens of this country are having to put up with. while the nurses and Dr’s are giving good service and doing all they can for patients, still., they are stretched to intolerable levels. which can only bode ill for their own future health, yet they still continue to do the job. i hope he is taken into a hospital and left on a stretcher like so many are at present.(i dont wish ill on the man but i do hope he is in a position to really see whats going on. )
On the other hand, you could look at it a different way and say, why DOESN’T he go private and free up the staff that will be looking after him so they can look after someone who doesn’t have the cash to bi-pass the NHS and pay for his own treatment, again so someone poorer could benefit. quicker.
always 2 sides to a story isn’t there?
i know of some of the very best bowel surgeons in the uk and i just hope he doesn’t phone me up requesting any advice
he’s just a typical Tory minister and wont’s to blame others for his downfall of his own making
i cant see his problem thow as he doesn’t use the NHS and theirs a lot of cowboys in the private sector so he’s got his work cut out in finding the right person
contrary to very popular belief not all surgeons are the same by a long shot so he will need to do his own research as it has a high failure rate
I expect he will milk the NHS, the service he did his best to destroy, for all he can get.
The real kicker is that he actually introduced the screening and his mate hunt was responsible for cancelling it