I am relieved to say that following my latest series of scans, and after surviving some 34 brain tumours, it appears that no further treatment is presently necessary thanks to the Gamma Knife team in Sheffield. NHS England please note – Gamma Knife works.

The Sutent chemotherapy drug that we had to campaign for from Nice still seems to be holding my cancer at bay elsewhere, thanks to my local oncology team.

This is despite being told more than five years ago by the Nice CEO that it would only give us an extra few months of life. When Sutent stops working I should be able to access a second line drug thanks to David Cameron’s excellent Cancer Drugs Fund, which has already given extra time to more than 34,000 patients.

I am pleased we still have our NHS which, although not perfect, is still meant to be free at the point of delivery.
Sadly, we are now closer to privatisation as evidenced by recent news that cancer patient care is to be privatised. Many of us are worried about this as it means we are to be sold off to a profit focused new provider who will want to restrict drugs/treatments even more to maximise returns. This is nothing new as ongoing fragmentation of our NHS continues apace.

Cancer patients may end up having to pay a high cost for cancer treatments as in the US, despite having paid a lifetime of taxes. My concerns are for the next generation.

I have personally experienced this scenario having already paid £30,456 for Gamma Knife treatment a couple of years ago, whereas cost to NHS was only half this figure. No one would tell me what happens to the surplus. So now I live in fear in case I need treatment again. It appears that despite earlier government promises about innovative new radiotherapy, NHS England are doing their best to avoid funding Gamma Knife, which I will discuss at greater length next time. They seem to be dragging their heels on anything to do with radiotherapy which does cure more cancer than drugs, and yet the vast majority of the budget goes to powerful big drug companies.

I wonder why?

The NHS in England faces a funding gap of up to £2bn, about two per cent of its budget, for the next financial year. The Department of Health say they are confident that it would make the necessary savings and is on track to make £20bn savings this Parliament.

Such cost savings will be difficult to achieve as something has to go and may be it will be Gamma Knife.

According to Chris Ham, the CEO of the Kings Fund “everywhere you look across the NHS there are pressures facing patient care”.

There is a real risk of some hospitals running out of money even this year.

This is hardly surprising with continued waste, poor management, together with colossal salaries being paid for many managers. The Medway Foundation Trust, with a desperate shortage of 120 nurses has hired at least ten temporary managers on rates of at least £200,000 pa. This is despite providing unsafe care as it was put into special measures last year after an investigation into high death rates.

They have hired more than 30 interim managers on six figure salaries over the last few months. The most highly paid are receiving annual rates of up to £540,000 per year including an interim chairman on a £200,000 package to work as little as one day a week.

Margaret Hodge MP has recently spoken out about lack of effectiveness of Monitor who are meant to be responsible for reviewing performance of Foundation Trusts.

It’s no wonder that Simon Stevens, the new CEO of NHS England in his recent motivational speech to staff, says that “in one of the largest surveys ever published NHS management was ranked first in the nation as the most popular graduate employer.” He goes on to announce an additional 50 senior management staff to support specialised commissioning and I can only assume that most will be on salaries of at least £100,000.

Nurse leaders have urged this government to get a grip on the scale of excess in different parts of the NHS which must adversely impact on the good work being done by our front line nurses who are left to struggle with only minimal annual pay rises.  It’s bad enough to learn that the NHS routinely loses £5bn per annum to fraud, and that’s before one single patient has been treated.

If the government really had the appetite for it then we should more aggressively target the super rich and their billions of uncollected taxes. This could be used to fully fund our NHS and go a long way to supporting our elderly in old age.