The South Belfast MLA, who also chairs the All-Party Group on Cancer at Stormont, stated: “Across too many areas cancer survival rates in Northern Ireland lag behind our peers, and in the absence of an Executive we are not acting urgently enough to address this.
“The latest example is lung cancer which, while often hard to detect, can benefit from early intervention with early screening, as in England. That early intervention saves lives.
“The question with all these things is not whether we can afford to intervene, but whether we can afford not to. Prevention and early intervention are at the heart of Bengoa, and we should in fact be ahead of our neighbours on such things, as we have been on breast cancer.
“I will be writing to the Department to try to understand why we are not acting faster on lung cancer given progress elsewhere in the UK.”