Debate contribution: Cancer: Rural Inequalities
Debate contribution by Mr Mike Nesbitt on .
- MLA
- Mr Mike Nesbitt
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 18 February 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Oral Answers to Questions
- Heading
- Cancer: Rural Inequalities
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 4806402
Read the official Assembly record
Text
My Department is committed to ensuring equitable and timely access to cancer diagnosis and treatment for all residents in Northern Ireland, regardless of location. It is important to understand whether individuals in rural areas face different challenges or barriers compared with those in urban areas when it comes to a cancer diagnosis. We have to understand any differences that exist. Therefore, my Department funded the Northern Ireland Cancer Registry at Queen's University Belfast to develop a research project on routes to diagnosis. That project aims to identify the key event in each cancer patient's pathway that most directly led to their cancer diagnosis, whether that was through a GP red-flag referral, a screening programme, an emergency department or any other route. The project also examines the cancer stage at diagnosis by the route of diagnosis. The research will highlight any demographic inequalities in the diagnostic routes that need to be addressed. Identifying and addressing those disparities is essential to promoting early cancer detection, improving survival rates and reducing cancer mortality for all. The most recent report of the project, published in 2024, provides findings for patients who were diagnosed in the period 2018-2020. It includes analysis by demographic characteristics, such as age, sex, trust area and social deprivation. The Northern Ireland Cancer Registry is now working on a follow-up report for patients diagnosed between 2018 and 2021, which will provide an analysis of their routes to diagnosis and of the differences between those who live in urban and rural locations.
250 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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