Madam, - It is of great concern to Europa Donna Ireland, the Irish breast cancer campaign, that breast cancer surgery (indeed, any cancer surgery) is being deferred (Irish Times, December 11th). It is particularly ominous when this happens with women referred by BreastCheck.
BreastCheck has a charter for women which guarantees access to surgery within three weeks of diagnosis and generally this target is met. Women who are diagnosed outside the programme, ie because they have symptoms, have no such guarantees at present and are presumably also affected by the capacity problems referred to.
One in three of us will contract cancer within our lifetime and one in four of us will die from it.
We now have about 2,000 women being diagnosed with breast cancer every year and about 650 deaths. These statistics will rise over the next few years due to demographic changes and are well known, but do not seem to merit the type of urgency that they should. The Strategy for Cancer Control in Ireland was published earlier this year and quality breast cancer guidelines are being finalised.
However, as always, the problem is implementation and Europa Donna Ireland wants to see speedy implementation of a strategy which will significantly improve cancer survival rates.
At the very least we would like to have a timetable and programme for implementation. - Yours, etc,
DEIRDRE O'CONNELL, Chair, Europa Donna Ireland PO Box 6602, Dublin 8.