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Screening Saves Lives

Breakthrough's Screening Saves Lives campaign, launched in May 2006, has four key strands detailed below, with a variety of activities taking place to achieve the campaign's aims.

Take-up of appointments

All women aged 50-70 should receive an invite every three years to a breast screening appointment. Unfortunately not all women choose to attend these appointments. This can be for a variety of reasons, including misconceptions about breast cancer and who is at risk from it, misconceptions about breast screening itself, inaccurate or outdated address details held by GPs and inconvenient times and locations of appointments.

The Government sets a minimum standard for the take-up of breast screening appointments of 70%. In some parts of the country, however, we know that takeup can be as low as 50%.

We have contacted all MPs in constituencies where take-up is below 70% to explore ways in which we can work with them to understand reasons for the problem in their area and ways in which we can improve the situation.

Intervals between screening appointments

The NHS Breast Screening Programme aims to screen eligible women once every three years. However, we know that this is not always the case, and in some areas women have to wait for up to five years between appointments. Given that early detection plays a vital role in an individual’s chances of surviving breast cancer, this delay between appointments is potentially very serious.

We know that the main reason for these delays is often a lack of capacity in the NHS Breast Screening Programme. We contacted MPs whose constituents may be having to wait longer than three years between screening appointments, and asked them to contact the then Health Secretary, the Rt Hon Patricia Hewitt MP, asking her to make sure that no woman has to wait more than three years between appointments. We are in the process of taking this strand of the campaign forward with the new ministerial team at the Department of Health, and with the NHS Breast Screening Programme itself.

Older women

Breakthrough welcomed the extension of the upper age limit of the NHS Breast Screening Programme to 70 in 2004 and was delighted with the 2007 announcement of an extension for women aged 47-73.

Breakthrough wants to ensure that regardless of the upper age limit for automatic invites to the Programme, all women over that age are aware that they are entitled to arrange their own screening appointments through their GP and that they know the benefits of doing of so.

Baby Boomers

There are a growing number of women becoming eligible for the NHS Breast Screening Programme as women born in the post-war baby boom reach their 50th birthdays. The Government expects this increase to peak in 2015, resulting in a 20 per cent increase in women aged 50 to 70, in England, between 2005 and 2025.

We called on the Government to ensure that the NHS Breast Screening Programme’s capacity was increased to meet this demographic challenge. Following publication of the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review, which Breakthrough had mobilised parliamentary support around in supporting this issue, we asked supportive MPs to write to Andy Burnham MP, to confirm that the Department of Health settlement within the review included funding for the Programme. We were delighted when we received letters from Mr Burnham, through these MPs, which stated, “I can confirm that the Department of Health’s settlement does include funding for the extension of this Programme, and for further demand pressures placed upon health services.”

We will be working to ensure that this funding is indeed made available and is used effectively by the Department of Health.




For further information

Vicki Nash
vickin@breakthrough.org.uk
Tel: 020 7025 2435
Fax: 020 7025 2401

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