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Olubukola Ayodele: Wake-Up Call for Women’s Health in the UK

Olubukola Ayodele/LinkedIn

Jul 4, 2025, 23:06

Olubukola Ayodele: Wake-Up Call for Women’s Health in the UK

Olubukola Ayodele, Consultant Medical Oncologist at University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust, shared a post on Linkedin:

“It was great to be back at Parliament yesterday where I attended the official launch of the Hologic, Inc. Women’s Cancer Screening Taskforce at House of Commons: a timely and urgent conversation, especially with the launch of the NHS 10-Year Health Plan.

It was an honour to join healthcare professionals, MPs and charity leaders to review the Taskforce’s report, discuss its recommendations and sign a collective pledge committing to action.

The report doesn’t pull punches. It highlights what many of us working in breast cancer care already know:

Our screening infrastructure is outdated
The workforce is overstretched, undervalued and burning out
There are deep inequities in who gets screened and who doesn’t
Technology adoption is too slow, even when the evidence is clear.

What’s particularly concerning is that the UK has now fallen to 41st place in the global women’s health index. That ranking should be a wake-up call.

If the NHS Long Term Plan is to be more than just words, it must reflect the urgency of what we heard yesterday:

We need to urgently revamp the breast cancer screening programme in the UK. This includes embracing innovation, resourcing and retaining the workforce and addressing the cultural and logistical barriers that continue to exclude so many women especially in ethnic minority and low-income communities from life-saving screening.

The Taskforce’s 10 recommendations are practical and actionable. From protected training time and workforce planning to ringfenced community engagement funding and interoperable data systems, “the roadmap is there”.

We have the evidence. We have the expertise. And now, we have a new national health plan that must reflect the urgency of this moment.

But plans and pledges will only go so far. What we need now is implementation. Urgently. Strategically. Equitably.

Because when women aren’t reached, cancers aren’t caught and outcomes suffer.

Thank you to Paul Holmes for the invitation. It was a pleasure to meet and connect with like minded individuals such as Olivia Rufai. Great to see Baroness Finlay who has promised to attend the London Global Cancer Week this year.”

Olubukola Ayodele: Wake-Up Call for Women's Health in the UK