Carol Monaghan – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Carol Monaghan on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps his Department is taking to raise public awareness of (a) pancreatic cancer and (b) other cancers for which symptoms can be non-specific and have similarities to other benign conditions.

David Mowat

Public Health England’s (PHE) Be Clear on Cancer campaigns are designed to raise the public’s awareness of specific cancer symptoms, encourage people with those symptoms to go to the doctor and diagnose cancer at an earlier stage. An early visit to a general practice can make a cancer more treatable, and thereby improve cancer survival rates. These campaigns are delivered by PHE in partnership with the Department and NHS England. There are a number of cancers, including those where symptoms can be non-specific, which are not covered by ‘Be Clear on Cancer’ explicitly.