NHS breast cancer screening rates drop to their lowest level in a decade

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Breast screening rates have dropped to their lowest this decade, official figures show.

Only 70.5 per cent of women in England aged 50 to 70 went to routine screening in 2017/18, down from 71.1 per cent the previous year.

It means around 750,000 women who were invited did not attend their appointments, according to NHS Digital statistics.

Experts blame it on busy lives, worries that mammograms are painful and concerns that screening can do more harm than good.

Baroness Delyth Morgan, chief executive of the charity Breast Cancer Now, said: ‘It’s extremely worrying that uptake of breast screening continues to fall and has reached another decade low.

‘If this decline continues, next year could see screening in England fall below its minimum attendance target of 70 per cent for the first time, and we must act now at national and regional levels to reverse this trend. With breast cancer incidence continuing to rise, it’s really

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