We couldn’t let yesterday’s announcement of lung cancer screening go by without hearing from the man who set the wheels in motion. The man who made lung cancer a priority when no one else would. The man who cared so deeply about those affected by lung cancer he demanded change.
Our charity’s incredible founder, Professor Ray Donnelly MBE, shares his thoughts on yesterday announcement of a national targeted screening programme for lung cancer and what it took to get here.
“This is truly a memorable, momentous and wonderful day when lung cancer screening has been announced on a national basis.
“It will make such a huge difference for whom this charity exists – people with lung cancer, their families, friends and loved ones.
“When I first started the charity in 1990, our first and primary aim was to establish a lung cancer screening early detection programme, and within a couple of years, we were able to give a major grant to the University of Liverpool to begin what was called the Liverpool Lung Project.
We put millions of pounds into this research project over the years, long before any of the other cancer charities paid any attention to lung cancer
“The results of that were good and formed the basis of two pilot studies which we carried out around the country. Again, these were successful in bringing forward cases of early stage lung cancer.
“This led to pilot studies being carried out in ten centres across the country, again with a high success rate of diagnosing cancer in stage one and two when it can generally be cured.
“So now we have the national screening programme announced and this will make a huge difference to survival rates for lung cancer, which historically have been very, very poor. This is such a major advance and we will find many more patients in stages one and two when it can generally be cured and that is a real cause to be celebrated.”
