Cancer chiefs are becoming increasingly alarmed and frustrated at the devastating impact of NHS industrial action on care and treatment. Tens of thousands of patients have had cancer appointments, treatments and operations ditched since the strikes began 13 months ago.
The current six-day industrial action is the ninth time junior doctors have stopped work in the past year and the longest strike to hit the NHS since it was founded in 1948.
But with no end in sight to the dispute between the government and junior doctors, who make up about half the medical workforce, and medics refusing to rule out more strike action, oncologists and cancer leaders said the stalemate was needlessly reducing the survival chances of sick patients.
Their intervention will pile further pressure on Rishi Sunak, the prime minister; Victoria Atkins, the health secretary; and the British Medical Association's junior doctors' committee to resume talks and agree a deal.
Patients diagnosed with typically less survivable conditions such as lung, liver, brain, oesophageal, pancreatic and stomach cancers are particularly at risk from disruption caused by the strikes, cancer chiefs said. Any delay to treatments in these cases can "severely limit" their options and mean "even worse survival prospects", they added.
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