What a stupid f... mistake to stop treatment for cancer patients during lockdown

[alwayslosing]

Stopping the treatment for life threatening conditions was a stupid mistake that costs lives.
The stupid reason that the treatment can aggravate COVID 19 symptoms in case the patients gets it is a money making scam on behalf of the government.

Just watched the news about a lady that died because her cancer treatment was stopped. She could have lived longer and be with her boys. It made me so angry and frustrated that these people were not given the option to choose whether or not to continue the treatment. Choices were made for people and people died as a result.,

This is ridiculous...what kind of society are we living in? Is COVID 19 an excuse to stop treatments saving money and killing the sick?

This is not happening only in the UK but all over the world.

Although initially we thought he would be getting the chemo about now but looks like it’s going to be another 3 months. It is a bit of a worry that it might come back but what can you do.

It has annoyed me intensely when on the news they say that the drop in patients presenting is solely due to people being too scared to attend.

It is classic "victim blaming" by the NHS to try to divert the blame onto the patient rather than the NHS itself, who basically did just shut up shop back in March and have been ridiculously slow to get up and running again.

My OH had his cancer treatment, blood tests, consultations, etc all stopped. He had to chase constantly to get things moving again. Not a single "welfare" call from the GP surgery, nor oncology to give him updates, check on condition etc.

I was due my six monthly diabetic blood tests and review back in April. I've phoned the GP surgery 3 times now to ask when these can go ahead, to be told "not at the moment, phone back in a month or so". So, they're still not doing routine blood tests!

@RunningAwaywiththeCircus is your DH still taking patients ? we couldn't find a private oncologist who was taking patients on during it. Became academic as we then managed to get the drugs through the nhs but aware they might be time limited. We've private cover so just need to get an oncologist in place.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/coronavirus-could-mean-extra-35-000-deaths-from-cancer-2zmknbvdv?shareToken=1bdbe6a6e07b0a3d1d84ae07f446d808

Tried to share the Times article.

@pandafunfactory I have been volunteering for my local hospital for the last 6 months, long before it was this need for nhs volunteer army so I know exactly what they are battling. You don't need to reiterate it.
I've been there during the Covid crisis and I understand.
I'm not talking about the staff working in these hospitals. I'm talking about the heads at the top that all they care about is to save money .

I agree we shouldn't blame patients, but the person we should hold responsible is the health minister.

Anecdotal, but one of my friends here in the US works in an oncology department. He said for a few weeks their patient work dropped by about 50%, but it quickly went back up to about 80% of normal.

They had to take a lot of extra precautions due to Covid, so having a smaller patient load didn't mean they were working fewer hours.

@RunningAwaywiththeCircus The UK spends 8-9% GDP on the NHS, which employs 1.5 million people
but is continually subject to reorganisations and stop-go in funding

I live in Germany, which receives 11-12% of the huge German GDP,
no cuts even during recession because all main parties agreed on taxation to provide consistent funding,
with no mucking about on ideological grounds when the governments changed.

There are 4.5 million people employed in healthcare
There is no postcode lottery - health & hospital provision is uniform across the country

Germany has large spare capacity and rationing has never been a part of the health system here

So cancer and other important treatments could continue as normal

The UK has far fewer general hospital beds, ICU beds, doctors than Germany and most other European countries

The NHS became the COVID health service because it had no spare capacity
and dealing with COVID meant having to postpone most other things

• especially as many staff were off sick at various times

This is what happens when a health service has insufficient budget over many years
and too many reorganisations imposed for ideology

Also seems that other services are impacted too. My dentist (I’ve been their patient for 23 years) has cancelled all of its NHS patients and will only see private as they cannot afford the time that is required for PPE and cleaning compared to the limited funding received from the NHS. So that’s four us now trying to find a NHS dentist.

Didn't need to happen. If as soon as Nightingales were ready they had made regular hospital Covid free zones except A&E. CV patients couldn't have any visitors so they could have been hospitalised anywhere. My understanding is many surgeons and nurses were not moved into treating CV patients so could have continued with treatments in their regular area.
They are belatedly doing this but the opposite way round with Exeter Nightingale becoming a cancer centre.
Such bad planning which will result in the unnecessary loss of many lives.

OP where is your evidence to say that cancer treatment being stopped is a money making scam for the government?

Well...isn't it obvious? Are you really that gullible to believe otherwise?
So many people mentioned that their treatment has been stopped and Covid 19 is the excuse.

Sorry there aren't statistics to show you black on white...there will never be

I agree 100%. It was total madness. Many many people are going to have their lives cut short because of this decision.

Why is there such disparity though ? We have the wife of an oncologist saying her husband was told that no treatment could go ahead for any of his patients and yet all the patients I see who were having chemo prior to lockdown, continued with their cycles through out lockdown.

I know someone who was diagnosed with cancer in April - a form with a very high survival rate with treatment. Except he caught covid in hospital and died

I still think for most people, cancer is more likely to kill them/make them very ill than covid is.

My mum has a friend whose treatment for skin cancer was delayed because of covid, but it happened three weeks later, so not that long in the end (and she didn't have a melanoma, so it wasn't one of the most serious forms of skin cancer).

@frumpety

Why is there such disparity though ? We have the wife of an oncologist saying her husband was told that no treatment could go ahead for any of his patients and yet all the patients I see who were having chemo prior to lockdown, continued with their cycles through out lockdown.

Is it widespread disparity though? How many trusts had a blanket ban on all cancer treatment?

I wonder if it also depends on what a particular doctor’s patient group is composed of. So even within a trust some doctors might find all their patients have had their treatment changed or delayed and some will have most of their patients receiving treatment.

[quote frumpety]@DuineArBith glad to hear she has managed to get started and hopefully she will start to feel some benefit soon. What worries me most about your friends scenario, not least the witholding of a simple and quick and very cheap treatment, is that she had to really push for it, how many others would have the ability to do that ?[/quote]
Absolutely.

Though my friend is feeling some benefit, the problem is that the time she spent without any treatment has caused damage which can't be reversed.

@Viviennemary

I agree 100%. It was total madness. Many many people are going to have their lives cut short because of this decision.

It's already happened in far too many cases. The ONS reported on a significant increase in non-Covid deaths most of which are likely to be attributable to people being reluctant to seek medical advice or treatments being refused/postponed.

*"Well...isn't it obvious? Are you really that gullible to believe otherwise?
So many people mentioned that their treatment has been stopped and Covid 19 is the excuse."
*
Sorry OP I don't go in for conspiracy theories.

It's already happened in far too many cases. The ONS reported on a significant increase in non-Covid deaths most of which are likely to be attributable to people being reluctant to seek medical advice or treatments being refused/postponed.

The ONS report have said the most likely cause of those excess deaths looks to be undiagnosed Covid. The majority were in care homes and mostly were due to Alzheimers or dementia where patients may bet be able to communicate symptoms well. Most of the rest were attributed to underlying conditions that are known to be risk factors for complications in COVID which might suggest an undiagnosed covid infection. Obviously more work needs to be done, but they concluded that so far they weren’t seeing any evidence that those deaths were being caused by other factors e.g. hospital capacity.

That’s probably supported by the fact that as infections are falling the excess death rate is now below the five year average even though the healthcare system is a long way off functioning normally.

That’s not to say absolutely nobody has died due to inability to access healthcare but the idea that most of the non covid excess deaths are attributable to an inability to access healthcare currently has no basis.

I was given a cancer referal during lockdown and was seen within 1week and a day, which was amazing, and turned out to be nothing. The most urgent cases were not put on hold or stopped.