Doctor: NZ is failing its cancer victims

Tony Ryall. Photo / Getty Images

The public health system is failing cancer patients, the New Zealand Medical Journal says.

The journal's editor, Professor Frank Frizelle, a surgeon, comments in an editorial that a series of articles in the journal "suggest that we are failing those with cancer".

He contrasts their findings with the "fine words" of the Government's cancer control strategy, which aims to increase cancer prevention and ensuring early detection to reduce deaths.

"We don't need just these words, we also need adequate resourcing, and most of all we need leadership and a desire to improve what we deliver."

Health Minister Tony Ryall said last night that the Government agreed cancer care must improve.

"That's why we have given cancer special priority with district health boards, expecting waiting times to improve across the continuum of care."

One of the articles highlighted poor levels of care for bowel cancer.

New Zealand has one of the world's highest incidence and death rates for bowel cancer and it is the country's second most common cancer.

About 2700 new cases and 1200 deaths are reported each year.

The Government is planning a national bowel cancer screening programme, which experts say could save one in six deaths from the disease.

Mr Ryall said several pilot schemes may start in 2011-2012, and were expected to lead to a national programme.

But doctors and researchers say progress is too slow. Australia and Britain began national programmes in 2006.

"In the absence of a screening programme, New Zealand will continue to diagnose colorectal cancers at late stages, with incidence rates at the top end of the international league tables," Christchurch surgical registrar Paul Samson and colleagues say in their article.

Their 2001-2004 study found that only 28 per cent of bowel cancers in New Zealand had not spread before being diagnosed, against 34 per cent in New South Wales, 40 per cent in the United States and 42 per cent in Britain.

This was a significant public health concern.

In the US, the survival rate at five years after treatment was 90 per cent for those diagnosed with localised disease, but only 10 per cent if the cancer had spread to distant parts of the body.

A separate study in the journal found that, compared to older New Zealanders, those aged 25 to 54 were more likely to present with advanced bowel cancers.

A third study, of lung cancer patients at Middlemore Hospital found patients, especially outpatients, had to wait longer than recommended by international guidelines.

* Diagnosis

Only 28 per cent of bowel cancer cases are diagnosed before disease starts to spread.

In 21 per cent, cancer has spread to distant organs at diagnosis.

Lung cancer outpatients waited 18 days to see specialist.