The charity, Breast Cancer Now, held a drop-in session in Parliament recently to enlist MPs' help to increase breast screening uptake in England.
Richard Fuller MP, who attended the drop-in said:
The take up rate for breast cancer screening has not recovered post pandemic. I was shocked to learn of these statistics when I met Tom and Jasneet from Breast Cancer Now.
Bedfordshire is not as bad as some areas but I came here to echo their call to encourage women who are invited for a screening to make every effort to take this up.
Screening finds most breast cancers early when survival is almost 100%. But latest NHS England data, published recently (30th January), reveals that the minimum NHS target for how many women should be screened for breast cancer has been missed for the fourth year in a row. This means that thousands fewer breast cancer cases are being diagnosed as a result in England.
If the achievable 80% attendance target had been met, 458,073 more women would have been screened, and 3,758 more breast cancers would have been found.
