Ms Averil Power:

I hope the Deputy does not mind me interrupting. Cancer symptoms are vague. It is not necessarily like where people are clear that a breast lump can mean breast cancer. Stomach symptoms, abdominal pain, bloating and fatigue could be irritable bowel syndrome, IBS, or it could be a stomach cancer. The reason we have some of the worst prognoses for cancer is that we have pancreatic cancer, stomach cancer or gynaecologic cancers where the symptoms can look like something else. As the Deputy has stated, that is precisely the problem. People are going through those and saying something is not right, is not normal for the person's body, and is definitely strange, but that it might not be serious so the person will not go to a GP. They then end up being diagnosed with a late-stage pancreatic cancer that has a 20% chance of survival. It is crazy. I apologise again for interrupting but the Deputy is absolutely 100% correct and hitting the point. It is harder to treat, which means people getting more invasive treatments that have a much worse impact on their quality of life if they survive. It is also more expensive for the health service to treat them, as the Deputy has said. It does not make sense.