Health partners join Hackney Council in pledging support to raise awareness on Rare Disease Day
To mark Rare Disease Day (29 February), local health partners have joined Hackney Council in pledging support to improve outcomes for people living with rare diseases in Hackney, including those living with less common cancers.
The Council was the first local authority to pass a motion in 2018, pledging to raise awareness and understanding of rare and less common cancers because of the inequalities people face in diagnosis, treatments and outcomes.
Since the motion was passed, the Council has worked with City and Hackney Clinical Commissioning Group, (CCG), to provide training and information for health professionals and partners into rare and less common cancers.
To ensure that the message is far reaching, the Council has created a toolkit to share with other councils, calling on them to join Hackney in passing a motion, as well as encouraging them to work with their local cancer charities and health networks to support health professionals, patients and their families. Councillors have also written to the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care advocating for government action.
Rare Disease Day is a timely reminder that almost all of us will have been touched by cancer or some other less understood disease in one way or another at some point in our lives. Research and treatment for many diseases has progressed rapidly but sadly there are some that are still harder to diagnose and treat.
Since the motion was passed by Full Council in 2018, Hackney has begun to lay the foundations to work with our health partners, such as the CCG, to increase understanding and awareness of certain forms of cancer and improve outcomes for people in Hackney - particularly those living with rare and less common ones.