BRITAIN is the breast cancer capital of the world - yet our cancer services lag behind the rest of Europe.
The NHS has fewer cancer specialists per head than Poland.
It is estimated as few as 50% of cancer patients sees a specialist, and that as a result 5,000 a year die unnecessarily.
Over 300 British women die each week of breast cancer, which is the biggest killer of women aged 35-55.
Yet patchy provision and stretched resources can mean that women fearing they have breast cancer can have to wait three months for a referral to a specialist.
Overall 250,000 new cancers are diagnosed every year.
Different levels of expertise prevail in different hospitals. In Scotland, one teaching hospital achieved almost 50% higher survival rates for women with ovarian cancer than district general hospitals.
Now new government proposals aim to 'streamline' cancer services by concentrating them in fewer, larger units. NAHAT has suggested as few as 28 key centres should carry out complex in-patient surgery in England, with 90% of patients being seen at more local hospitals as daypatients.
The danger is that this could force poorly patients receiving debilitating chemotherapy or radiotherapy treatment to make more uncomfortable journeys to ..Id from hospital.
And with the cash-driven internal market system working to the disadvantage of centres of excellence which carry higher overhead costs, there are serious doubts on the viability of the new policy.
• This and the article by John Lister above are reproduced from the new issue of Health Emergency newspaper, copies available (25p stamp) from LHE, 446, Uxbridge Rd, London W12 ONS. ozone levels as "low". Roger Higman, pollution campaigner at Friends of the Earth, commented:
"Whoever heard of a level five times higher than the recommended average being described as low'? If its own GWIL advisers and international experts say pollution over certain levels causes health risks, they should warn people and not disguise the facts.
No government warnings about the danger of melanoma and other skin cancers have been issued during the warm weather.
acknowledged that members of the European Parliament are on one of the cushiest gravy trains around.
When Edwina Curry was defeated in June's Euro-elections you could see the tears in her eyes; it wasn't the prestige of person or party which worried her, but those lost hundreds of thousands in salary, expenses, fake trave allowances and super-luxurious entertainment costs.
Losing all that and having to make do with the relative penury of Westminster (a measly 32 grand in salary!) would make anyone cry.
Some Labour MEPs give some of their allowances to their constituency parties. Others apparently think they are living in poverty.
For Labour MEPs have elected as their representative on the committee that runs the European parliament Richard Balfe, whose personal manifesto demands an all-round increase in allowances for MEPs - more money for fax machines and office equipment, more money for "travel", more money for "secretaries".
According to Richard Balfe: "I do not believe that we should apologise for or indulge in lengthy explanations of our resources as Members of the European parliament". Can't really argue with that, can you?
OW THE "THE REAL division that exists in Ireland is the division in people's hearts and minds". Thus, with a soundbite, SDLP leader John Hume can magic away the border, the British army, imperialism, sectarianism and the Orange state.
Hume was speaking at a well-attended conference on the theme "Towards Peace in Ireland" organised by the former leadership of the Labour Committee on Ireland.
It attracted an impressive platform of speakers ranging Hume to Sinn Fein's Mitchell McLaughlin, Kevin McNamara and Ken Livingstone.
The differences between the Labour front bench view (as represented by McNamara), Sinn Fein and John Hume are negligible.
Identical
Hostility to the armed struggle is a divisive issue, but their political methods and analysis are virtually identical.
Broadly speaking the political consensus on the future goes as follows: first, with the ending of the republican armed struggle there will be no need Livingstone says yes for the British army to patrol the streets.
Should the loyalist terrorists continue their murder campaign, this will bring them into conflict with the British state, putting them into an untenable position - thus their campaign will quickly end.
A local devolved assembly will be established, with an elements of power sharing, and anti-discrimination provisions will be made law.
Then, in Hume's words, "the more we work and talk together, barriers start to break down and people concentrate on areas of agreement".
And - naturally - this new era of co-operation heralds the inflow of inward investment from Europe and the United States. Just like on the West Bank.
Even people who one would have expected better of were taken in by this drivel. Martin Collins, former editor of Labour and Ireland, asserted that no return to "Stormont" - a sectarian Orange state possible.
In reality, unionism is only able to maintain its mass base by using sectarianism to blind the Protestant working class to its real interests in uniting with the oppressed on the rest of the island.
No amount of legislation will change the bigotry of loy-.. alism; and no bill of rights will alter the anti-democratic charauer or partition.
Demoralisation
To believe that the demobilisation of the anti-imperialist movement (something much wider than the armed struggle) is the prelude to a new era of justice and harmony in Ireland is the worst political shortsightedness imaginable.
However, the remnants of the Labour left, the withdrawal movement and Sinn Fein are falling in behind the new treaty imperialism is preparing.
Those of us who are still prepared to argue that no nation has the right to rule another, that the Irish people must determine their own future, and that the British must quit Ireland, have a long battle ahead.