Dame Cally Palmer, NHS England National Cancer Director said in a statement that the earlier people are diagnosed with cancer, the more likely treatment is to be successful. She went on to say urge people not to carry the worry of cancer, and come forward to get it checked out. In light of this, how are the NHS continuing to create cancer awareness?
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00:00 More than four out of five people would survive cancer if it was caught early enough.
00:07 So early diagnosis is really important.
00:09 If you live in Coventry, Nottingham, Basildon, Grimsby or Portsmouth, you should be on the
00:14 lookout for a double-decker NHS bus which is set to tour near your town this week.
00:19 In partnership with State Coach, the NHS bus ting tour comes as new survey data found that
00:24 two in five people would not make a GP appointment even if they spotted a possible early symptom
00:29 of cancer.
00:30 In a survey of 2,000 adults, it was found a quarter of them would just wait for the
00:34 symptom to go away.
00:36 Now Dr Hilary Jones told me a little bit more about what to expect about this bus and why
00:40 education and awareness could be the key weapon to use against cancer.
00:45 Cancer is a priority in the NHS and if we can just encourage more people to come forward,
00:50 not be frightened of a diagnosis that could be something that they fear, but to engage
00:58 with GPs, learn more about their condition and their symptoms, be more body aware and
01:04 this will make a big difference.
01:05 So it could be things like a change in your body that's been there for more than three
01:10 weeks.
01:11 So say you've had a cough for more than three weeks or a cough you've had has changed in
01:16 some way.
01:18 If you have tummy trouble, pain in the tummy or diarrhoea that's been going on for more
01:23 than three weeks, that's not normal and needs to be investigated.
01:28 Feeling particularly tired and unwell, but there's no particular reason why that should
01:32 be.
01:33 If you've had heartburn or indigestion for more than three weeks, if your emotions have
01:38 changed colour persistently, if you've got any unexplained pain or discomfort, any unexplained
01:46 lumps or bumps, bleeding from, you know, bleeding in the urine or in the motions, breathlessness,
01:53 those kind of things.
01:55 On the side of the bus, you'll find a striking message to remind people that of 78 passengers
02:00 the bus can carry, 65 would survive cancer if found at the earliest stage.
02:06 The GPs are busy, we know that, but we've actually made huge inroads into the backlog
02:11 that we had during the pandemic and we're catching up and that's great.
02:15 So we're getting there, but we do need individuals to say, yeah, I'm going to look after myself
02:21 and I'm going to go and see the GP.
02:24 Cancer Research UK's head information nurse, Martin Ledwick, said the number of people
02:28 in the UK diagnosed with cancer is set to rise by a third by 2040 and campaigns like
02:34 this can help people get diagnosed with cancer at an earlier stage when treatment is more
02:38 likely to be successful.
02:39 Oh, I think there's lots of reasons.
02:42 Yeah, it's easy to put things off, we're all busy and maybe we put other people first a
02:47 lot of the time and we think it's probably nothing, it's probably just this or that.
02:52 And if we make too many assumptions, it's not healthy.