Improving screening
3.1 Reducing the incidence of cancer is vital to long term efforts to reduce cancer mortality. Vigilance against the onset of disease is the next stage in our defence.
Where screening is possible, it is an important method of detecting abnormalities at an early stage, allowing treatment when the cancer is most likely to be curable, or in some cases, even before it develops. So the government is proposing a major expansion of the cancer screening programmes, where it is clear that it reduces mortality.
3.2 National breast and cervical screening programmes are already saving lives, screening five million women each year. In 1998/ 1999 the breast screening programme detected nearly 8,000 cancers, over 40% of which were very small (less than 15 millimetres). And the incidence of cervical cancer has fallen by 43% between 1988 and 1997.
