5. What action is the Welsh Government taking to improve cancer services in Wales? OAQ53659

I thank the Member for that. The actions set out in our cancer delivery plan include improved early diagnosis, extended services in primary care, a new cancer information technology system for Wales, and a single cancer pathway. All of those initiatives are designed to go on improving cancer services in Wales.

Thank you very much for the reply, Minister. Three quarters of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer die within a year of diagnosis; 80 per cent of those with the disease are diagnosed at an advanced stage, by which time surgery is no longer an option. Each year, there are around 500 new cases of pancreatic cancers in Wales. The charity Pancreatic Cancer UK is calling on the Welsh Government to set a target of treating all patients diagnosed within 20 days by 2024. First Minister, what is your Government doing to remove avoidable delays to treatment, to increase the chances of survival of people diagnosed with pancreatic cancers in Wales, please?

I thank the Member for that important question, and of course I'm aware of the calls to introduce a 20-day treatment target for pancreatic cancer. While I absolutely appreciate the points the Member has made about the nature of pancreatic cancer—its difficulty in being diagnosed early, its aggressive nature once it is detected—in the end, I do not think it would be equitable to introduce a target specifically for one tumour type.

Our approach has always been to offer people with any type of cancer the opportunity to be treated as quickly as possible. That's why we are introducing a new single cancer pathway, because we're confident that it will support more rapid access to treatment. And that is very important, Llywydd, at a point where more and more people are being referred in for treatment—and that's a success story: more people referred in early, more people being assessed early. There were 32 per cent more people starting definitive treatment within target time in the month ending January of this year than five years ago. And that is a remarkable tribute to the service that is provided here in Wales, the clinicians, and others, who work in it, and their concerns quite certainly extend to pancreatic cancer, and our efforts in cancer as a whole will help to improve services for them too.

I'm grateful to the First Minister for his answer to Mohammad Asghar. If I can draw the First Minister's attention to research that was presented to us as Assembly Members by the charity Ovarian Cancer Action, showing that over 40 per cent of GPs in Wales wrongly believe that ovarian cancer symptoms only present at the later stages of the disease, while 40 per cent of women have to visit their GP three times with those presenting symptoms before they get a referral. I would like to ask the First Minister today if he will have some discussions with the Minister for Health and Social Services to see if there are ways in which we can improve GPs' awareness of the fact that, in fact, there are earlier symptoms of ovarian cancer that can be picked up, to ensure that women do get referred more quickly, where it's appropriate for them to do so, into specialist services.

Absolutely, Llywydd, I'm very happy to have those conversations. A great deal of effort goes on with the GP community in Wales to make sure that GPs are as well equipped as they can be to help with early identification and early referral into the system. The Member may be aware, I think, of the fact that we have recently funded two new pilot initiatives, where, when GPs have a patient whose symptoms are not such that they would allow them to refer them into the main diagnostic pathway, they are able to refer them to these two centres for rapid diagnosis. Now, we will learn the lessons from the two centres that we have funded to date. They have some promising aspects about them—certainly, they are well liked by patients. And they may offer GPs an opportunity, if we were able to extend them further, to provide an early insight for those patients where symptoms are uncertain, but where GPs have an an anxiety that they think is worth following up.