NHS National Screening Programmes

Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:13 pm on 18 October 2022.

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Photo of Mark Drakeford Mark Drakeford Labour 2:13, 18 October 2022

I'm very happy to confirm to the Member that all people who are directly employed by the Welsh Government are entitled to time off to attend screening appointments. I would have thought it would be entirely in the interests of any employer to make sure that they support their staff in doing so. The most important asset that any employer has will be the people who work for that service or that business, and the very effective screening services that we have here in Wales will help to keep those staff members fit, well and capable of being in work. So, I think it is not simply in the interest of the individual but it's in the interest of the business as well. 

If I could, maybe, just referring to what Mike Hedges said about the age extension of bowel screening, just give one illustration of the effectiveness of those programmes. If someone with bowel cancer has that cancer detected as a by-product of emergency intervention in their lives because of other things that have gone wrong, five out of 10 of those people will survive. If someone is diagnosed by their GP as having bowel cancer, seven out of 10 of those people will survive. If your bowel cancer is diagnosed as a result of screening, nine out of 10 people will survive, and that just demonstrates, doesn't it, the real significance of those screening services. And we want to improve the uptake of bowel screening and other screening services. So, it's absolutely in the interests of individuals, but it's equally in the interests of people who employ them as well to make sure that, when you see figures of survival of that sort, people should be released where they need to be released for a screening service to which they've been invited.