Britain is in a cancer crisis. Will a new strategy fix it?

英国正面临癌症危机。新的战略能否解决问题?

The Story

2026-02-04

31 分钟
PDF

单集简介 ...

On nearly every metric, the UK is ranked as one of the worst places in the Western world to have cancer. But today, the government is rolling out an ambitious new National Cancer Plan to tackle the crisis. Will it be able to shorten waiting lists? Or do cultural problems within the NHS warrant a deeper fix? This podcast was brought to you thanks to the support of readers of The Times and The Sunday Times. Subscribe today: http://thetimes.com/thestory Guests: Shaun Lintern, health editor, The Sunday Times.Jeremy Langmead, brand and content director of MR PORTER and contributor to The Times.Host: Manveen Rana. Producers: Micaela Arneson, Harry Stott. We want to hear from you - email: thestory@thetimes.com Read more: Why is Britain still lagging behind on cancer care? Further listening: Will a review into mental health fix a system in crisis? Clips: ITV News. Photo: Illustration by Pete Baker for The Sunday Times.  This podcast was brought to you thanks to subscribers of The Times and The Sunday Times. To enjoy unlimited digital access to all our journalism subscribe here. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
更多

单集文稿 ...

  • From The Times and The Sunday Times, this is the story.

  • I'm Manvine Rana.

  • Cancer affects most people in Britain in one way or another.

  • Celebrities, members of the royal family, Olympians and politicians,

  • even the health secretary, Wes Streeting, had it.

  • So why haven't we been better at treating it?

  • It's a question that's been asked for years.

  • Let me take you back to January 2018 and a debate in the House of Lords which became intensely personal.

  • I got into a taxi but I couldn't speak.

  • I had two powerful seizures.

  • I was taken to hospital.

  • Two days later I was told that I had a brain tumour.

  • Baroness Jowell, Tessa Jowell, who'd been a minister in the Blair and Brown governments,

  • was wearing a woolly hat

  • as she told a pack chamber about her own cancer and the limits of the treatment offered.

  • Less than 2% of cancer research funding is spent on brain tumours.

  • And no new vital drugs have been developed in the last 50 years.

  • And it wasn't just brain tumours.

  • The problems she raised chimed with the experience of cancer sufferers across the country.

  • We have the worst survival rate in Western Europe, partly because diagnosis in cancer is too slow.