Memorandum by CLIC Sargent (SP09)
INTRODUCTION
CLIC Sargent was formed in January 2005 through
the merger of two existing cancer charities, CLIC (Cancer and
Leukaemia in Children) and Sargent Cancer Care for Children.
Supporting more than 2,000 families and children
with cancer each month, CLIC Sargent provides the clinical, psychosocial,
emotional and financial help needed by those affected by childhood
cancer.
The result, in part, of our combined 65 years
of experience in cancer care and treatment, some seven out of
10 children and young people diagnosed with cancer will survive.
CLIC Sargent is committed to improving this figure still further
through its specialist care and funding both of clinical and social
research projects.
Stronger together, CLIC Sargent is now the UK's
fourth largest cancer charity by turnover and a single authoritative
campaigning voice on cancer care in children and young people.
Our remit extends to comment on all aspects of policy relevant
to the well-being of children with cancer and their families.
Priorities in our first year include lobbying on such issues as
the cost of cancer, and the bureaucracy surrounding benefit claims
and entitlement for the under 16s.
We welcome the opportunity to contribute to
the Health Select Committee Inquiry into smoking in public places.
SPECIFIC REMARKS
CLIC Sargent's primary concern is with childhood
cancers and leukaemias rather than those induced by lifestyle
or the social environment, but we recognise that significant exposure
to second-hand smoke could contribute to the emergence of cancers
in later life. Similarly, exposure to smoke during pregnancy can
have an impact on a child's development in the womb. Considering
how best to mitigate the risks of second hand smoke—particularly
to children and young people—should be a priority for government,
and we support the scrutiny of smoking in public places now being
undertaken by the Committee.
However, a greater source of a child's exposure
to second hand smoke is likely to occur in the family home. Taking
effective action against this point of contact will prove far
more complex than introducing a ban on smoking in public places.
Unless the problem of home exposure is tackled, the impact on
a child's health of any proposed ban on smoking in public places
is likely to be comparatively minor. We urge the Committee not
to neglect the wider social context of second-hand smoking, and
to consider what actions realistically can be taken to combat
involuntary exposure to smoke to which children may be subject
in the home.
Although recognising that the public health
debate will necessarily emphasise the lifestyle and social environment
factors contributing to cancer, CLIC Sargent considers it critical
that the Committee not lose sight of the broader context of cancer
care and treatment during its Inquiry.
Indeed, the overwhelming evidence demonstrating
a link between smoking, ill-health and some types of cancer notwithstanding,
targeting exposure to second-hand smoke remains only one aspect
of a far wider effort needed to tackle effectively the causes
of cancers. Discussion should focus as much on developing the
specific treatments needed for unique and discrete types of cancer—and
the groups these effect—as on banning smoking in public
places.
In this regard CLIC Sargent would highlight
the recent National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence
(NICE) Guidance, detailing for the first time appropriate treatment
standards in cancer care for children and young people. Advances
in cancer treatments, and the effective tailoring of these to
patient needs, are the key to combating actual cancers. Action
to ban smoking in public places, although important, appears more
about addressing hypothetical cancers.
But as cancer treatments improve, so too do
rates of survival. Survivors of childhood cancer face major challenges
from on-going side-effects in later life as a legacy of past aggressive
treatment. Significant exposure to second-hand smoke during their
adult years could have an adverse impact upon a childhood cancer
survivor's health and perhaps result in the emergence of additional
cancers.
Action that limits the future contact of survivors
to second-hand smoke is to be welcomed. CLIC Sargent would therefore
highlight to the Committee the role restrictions on smoking in
public places can play in protecting the health of childhood cancer
survivors in addition to the likely impact of a ban on the first
appearance of cancers.
9 September 2005
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