Dr. Jerome Coffey:

There are a number of answers to that question, one of which is awareness. Credit is due to the Irish Cancer Society and other charities that have conducted excellent awareness campaigns. The campaign on lung cancer, for example, outlines the symptoms that suggest lung cancer, until proven otherwise, and recommends that patients go to their GP and have a chest X-ray. We are working towards longer, more sustained public awareness campaigns and are also working with the education system.

In the context of the discussion on early diagnosis that came up in the previous session, I have just looked up the numbers and the rate of first-time presentations by patients with cancer to an emergency department is approximately 13%. The metric in the strategy is to reduce that by half over the lifetime of the strategy.