Tessa Munt MP called an adjournment debate in the House of Commons on the 8th February 2012, about the lack of Stereotactic Body Radiotherapy Treatments (SBRT), such as Cyberknife, and the delays in making funding for this treatment available to Cancer patients.
Tessa started by questioning the Minister (Mr Paul Burstow), about the Governments claim that over 25% of cancer centres have machines capable of delivering SBRT. It appears Tessa Munt MP has made a number of enquiries under the Freedom of Information Act, about the availability of SBRT, and has discovered that the suggestion 25% of cancer centres can deliver SBRT is very questionable indeed. It turns out that while the Govt haven’t actually lied about this, they have arrived at this figure by including IMRT machines that can be adapted to deliver Stereotactic rads, and machines that are not strictly SBRT machines, because they only deliver stereotactic rads to certain areas of the body.
Tessa Munt pointed out that as far as Cyberknife is concerned, we only five machines, while countries like Turkey have six. Mr Burstow denied that this is an indictment of Britains cancer service, because we have other machines capable of delivering SBRT.
Sadly there was no time to point out that SBRT machines actually differ a great deal and work in very different ways, but Tessa did ask why why the Government have said they will not be able to set a national tariff for SBRT treatments such as Cyberknife until 2014.
Mr Burstow said this was because the Govt needed time to establish it’s efficacy. Again there was insufficient time to point out that the Govt have only just had the recommendations of another report they commissioned (the NRIG report), which recommended funding outright for inoperable lung cancers, and within a clinical trial setting for most other cancers. If I were cynical I might think that the Govt didn’t like the findings of the NRIG, and want a report that better reflects their preference.
Given that one in three people are expected to get cancer at some stage, I think the Politicians are playing a very dangerous game. They are already giving cancer patients a very hard time with proposed changes to Disability Living Allowance, and it seems they have no qualms about dragging their feet over potentially life saving treatment.