Labor’s $112m cancer cure
Published: September 25, 2004
Cancer patients will be given individual case managers to help co-ordinate treatments with different specialists, under a new Labor plan.
A Labor government would pay for conferences involving patients, surgeons, radiologists, chemotherapy specialists and nurses to develop a treatment plan for cancer sufferers.
Many cancer sufferers have complained that they are passed from one specialist to another for different forms of treatment without any overall co-ordination.
Opposition Leader Mark Latham said a team-based approach would help to guide patients and their families through the cancer treatment system.
“Great advances have been made in early diagnosis and treatment,” Mr Latham said.
“But a diagnosis of cancer instantly pitches the patient and their family and friends into a new, and often intimidating, world with a range of services that are difficult to manage.”
Mr Latham is promising to spend $36 million to fund 120,000 team consultations for cancer
patients over the next four years.
He said the case manager or support person for cancer patients would generally be an oncology nurse.
Mr Latham said multi-disciplinary conferences rarely happened outside of the public hospital system because of inadequate funding for private specialists.
Labor has also promised an extra $12 million for clinical trials to develop better information about cancer treatments and patient care.
Altogether, the ALP has earmarked $112 million towards the battle against cancer. (Australia)
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