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The number of cancer diagnoses in Northern Ireland has reached an unprecedented level, with approximately 10,700 new cases identified annually. This equates to nearly 29 individuals being diagnosed each day. According to data released by Cancer Research UK, addressing delays in treatment and reducing waiting times should be a top priority for the Northern Ireland Executive.
Cancer remains the leading cause of death in the region, with around 4,600 fatalities each year attributable to the disease. Despite this, mortality rates have improved significantly, currently at their lowest point since the mid-1970s, showing an overall decline of 18%. The most common types of cancer account for over half of all new cases, with breast, prostate, lung, and bowel cancers making up 54%. Incidence rates have increased by 14% since the early 1990s, with female rates rising by 18% while male rates have remained stable. This gender disparity is largely linked to smoking-related cancers, where incidence has decreased among men but not yet among women.
Personal experiences highlight the challenges faced by patients navigating the healthcare system. Claire Haire, who discovered a breast lump in July last year, faced a protracted five-week wait before learning the lump was cancerous. She described this period as distressing, “I kept looking at my phone thinking I might get a phone call. You go through ‘it’s nothing’ to thinking ‘am I going to die’.” After diagnosis, her treatment process involved multiple delays between scans and results, intensifying the emotional burden. As a mother of two with a family history of cancer, Claire emphasized the pressure felt not only personally but throughout her family. Having completed chemotherapy, she is now preparing for 15 challenging radiotherapy sessions.
Another cancer survivor, Suzanne Rodgers, shared her journey after being diagnosed with stage four cervical cancer but remaining cancer-free for over ten years. She recounted how the initial period between diagnosis and treatment felt like “a ticking time-bomb,” emphasizing the anxiety caused by waiting while the disease potentially worsened. Suzanne urged the importance of early detection, encouraging people to monitor themselves carefully. She stated, “You can’t control how long it’s going to take before you start your treatment, but you can control or have some positive input into when you discover there is a problem.”
From an organizational perspective, Cancer Research UK’s Liz Morrison stressed the urgent need to improve cancer treatment waiting times in Northern Ireland. Currently, only about a third of patients begin treatment within 62 days after referral, considerably worse than the two-thirds seen elsewhere in the UK. Morrison called for an emergency and stabilisation plan to reverse this trend. “We need to take a step back and say why? How did we go from 83% in 2013 to 30% now of people meeting those targets,” she explained. She highlighted the existence of pockets of effective clinical practice and suggested learning from those examples by consulting healthcare professionals involved in the process to identify what works and what does not
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