Simona Francese

In this room, one in eight women will develop breast cancer, and one in 43 will die.

Looks better for men, but they're not immune.

And in 2022, the deaths by breast cancer were 670,000 globally, and 11,500 in the UK.

That's 32 people every day.

And cases are predicted to rise to 70,000 by 2040, right?

But here's the good news.

The death rates are actually falling, and they've been falling remarkably, by 44 percent.

Why?

certainly because interventions and better screening and better treatments, but definitely because we can catch cancer earlier.

So let's talk about screening, right?

For breast cancer, we have the gold standard of mammography, which is followed by biopsy if the result is positive.

And we have the breast screening program that invites women every year after a certain age.

But actually, the target is 70% nationally, but the uptake can be really low in some areas of the country.

So why is that?

We really need to understand the reasons why we can't do more screening and why we can't have a better uptake.

Because I think we can.

So, NHS backlogs, obviously this has been exacerbated by COVID, let me say, also by decades of underfunding of the NHS.

We have reduced resources, so there is a disproportion between the number of screenings needed and the radiologists.

Also, the mammographic equipment isn't exactly present in every city, town, village that you will need.

So we have here an accessibility problem, which is significantly worse for underserved populations.