What next for UK cancer care?
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What next for UK cancer care? Breast cancer specialist DR HUGO DE LA PEÑA looks at how Covid-19 affected cancer care in the UK and what should happen now. I have to start by talking about the pandemic. This context is important when we consider where we are with cancer now and where we will be in the coming months and years. Even without the benefit of hindsight, if you know anything about history and vaguely about immunology, it was very clear even before the first case of Covid-19 was ever detected in the UK, we were facing an unprecedented historic global event. It was also very clear in my mind (with the way we move and travel
now) that we were all going to be exposed and get Covid-19 sooner or later. For us in the UK, the pandemic first became real when Italy was hit. The news and scenes coming out of the Italian hospitals were truly horrific. We were no longer talking about a far-away country not able to cope, we were now talking about a major European economy very near to us, and a much-loved neighbour now collapsing before our very eyes. It was astonishing to see how extreme the cases were, from infected people with not many symptoms at
all, to death just days after infection. I remember having crisis meetings in cancer care. For us oncologists treating cancer patients, we were faced with an impossible dilemma. On one hand we simply didn’t know then if cancer itself would put our patients at a higher risk of death. Our first Hippocratic oath as medics is “Do no harm” but equally, it was very clear that if we didn’t treat our cancer patients because of fear of what could happen, the alternative was certain death.
Dr Hugo loved taking part in the London Marathon
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