A National Brain Tumour Strategy can’t wait
Dr Michele Afif, Chief Executive Officer
| The Brain Tumour Charity
Too often the brain tumour community has been left behind by healthcare policy. With the government’s consultation on the 10 Year Health Plan underway, it’s time to do better for people diagnosed with brain tumours
If I asked you what the biggest cancer killer of the under 40s was, what would you say? Bowel? Breast? Leukaemia? I doubt you would have answered brain tumours. Yet despite this, time and again people diagnosed with brain tumours are overlooked and left to fall through the cracks of health policies.
The government’s consultation on the 10 Year Health Plan for England, emphasising from ‘sickness to prevention’, builds on pre-existing strategies which prioritise disease prevention and early disease detection. But unlike other cancers, brain tumours are not readily detectable and aren’t preventable.
To explain, brain tumours don’t spread like other cancers. They don’t get ‘staged’. So, whilst early disease detection is an admirable goal, current targets to ensure 75 per cent of cancers are diagnosed by stage one or two1 will once again bypass brain tumours.
“Brain tumours are the biggest cancer killer of the under 40s”
In short, because brain tumours don’t fit neatly into the same box as other cancers, policies which focus on prevention and early diagnosis will leave people who have a brain tumour outside the scope of health policy decisions and the targets that flow from them.
It’s vital that this community isn’t left to fall further behind. This is the moment to make sure policies genuinely address the needs of these disadvantaged groups.
Biologically complex, brain tumours are also notoriously difficult to treat and cure. Poor survival rates for the most aggressive forms remain unchanged with just 13 per cent of adults surviving five years2 and no substantive new treatments for adults in more than two decades.
And whilst those with less aggressive disease have a better survival outlook, many are irretrievably harmed by the tumour as well as its treatment, with over 60 per cent of childhood brain tumour survivors unable to live independently as adults3.
We must do better for the 88,000 people living with a brain tumour and the 12,7004 who will be diagnosed each year. To do that, we need to reimagine a research landscape where promising early research is supported and clinical trials to test potential new brain tumour treatments no longer have the lowest recruitment levels of all cancer types5.
Change is possible. Tantalisingly reachable. But shifting the dial will require a comprehensive strategic plan – one that recognises that people with a brain tumour are unlikely to fully benefit from the improvements envisaged in proposed health policy shifts.
That’s why we need a National Brain Tumour Strategy, which in addressing the whole brain tumour pathway, is truly transformative in scope and ambition, moving further and faster towards kinder and more effective treatments so that people with a brain tumour can live longer, better lives.
References
1. NHS England (2019) NHS Long Term Plan (accessed October 2024)
2. NHS England (2023) Cancer Survival in England (accessed June 2023)
3. Brinkman, T. et al. (2018) Attainment of Functional and Social Independence in Adult Survivors of Pediatric CNS Tumors: A Report From the St Jude Lifetime Cohort Study. Journal of Clinical Oncology, 26, 27.
4. Cancer Research UK (2022) Brain, other CNS and intracranial tumours incidence statistics (accessed October 2024)
5. The Institute of Cancer Research (2021), Clinical Trials in Cancer (from 2017-2021) (accessed October 2024)
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