Questions Without Notice from the Party Leaders

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 1:40 pm on 19 June 2018.

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Photo of Carwyn Jones Carwyn Jones Labour 1:40, 19 June 2018

With screening, it's a question of who you target for the screening, because you can't screen everybody. Which elements of the population are particularly susceptible to a particular type of cancer, because it's not physically possible to screen everybody? We want, of course, to see consistency across the health boards. They're able to access the new treatments fund, if that's appropriate for what they wish to take forward. What I can say is that, when we look at our urgent suspected cancer route, for example, the vast majority of people started definitive treatment within the target time of 62 days—88.7 per cent—and 96 per cent of patients who are newly diagnosed with cancer not via the urgent route started definitive treatment within the target time of 31 days, in March 2018. So, the vast majority of people do get the treatment that they should get within the right amount of time. But, of course, we rely on specialists in order to advise us to make sure that we can see how we can improve screening where that's necessary.