London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

Breast cancer and other types of cancer should become legally notifiable, a top academic said yesterday (THURS)

And Prof. Michel Coleman warned that lives could be lost if the UK failed to respond to trends in cancer due to a lack of reliable statistics.

The London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine Professor of Epidemiology said the UK lagged behind other developed countries in providing statutory backing for a national registry for cancer.

Prof. Coleman added: "It is such an obvious step to take and the government has been repeatedly advised to take it, notably by the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology.

"If the government showed public health leadership, the public would support it.

"The UK is already years or decades behind many of our European neighbours, the US, Canada and other countries on this score."

And Prof. Coleman said that further fragmentation of health care delivery would make it even harder to collate reliable cancer data across the whole country unless it was made a legal requirement.

He said: "Complete and reliable figures are the basis of dependable cancer statistics, which can then be used to spot trends and target resources with maximum efficiency."

Prof. Coleman added that "robust audit" of cancer risks, treatments and outcomes was impossible if treatment centres were able to withhold data.

He said: "It would be a huge boost for the collection of national cancer statistics if it had the same legal protection as the collection of data on infectious diseases like TB has had since the 19th century.

"In Queen Victoria's day, infectious diseases killed a similar proportion of the population as cancer does now. It's long overdue for cancer to have the same kind of reporting mechanism."

Prof. Coleman added that a law requiring the confidential of all cancer cases would avoid restrictions on data collection and public health surveillance caused by recent legislation and would provide legal protection for doctors to notify cancer to the registry.

He added that Baroness Finlay had proposed new legislation for cancer reporting in the House of Lords in the last parliamentary session and she is expected to present a revised version of her bill in the current session.

Prof. Coleman said: "I would strongly urge politicians of every persuasion to throw their weight behind a new system of statutory cancer registration.

"Health services cannot be provided fairly and accurately to tackle what has become a huge public health problem without the best possible statistics to work from."