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BIR Bulletin

In October last year a working party of the Royal College of Radiologists (RCR) published its report on manpower and staffing in the United Kingdom (RCR, 1991). Its main conclusion, perhaps pre-dictably, is that there are far too few of us, though the public at large will be alarmed no doubt to hear that despite the fact that cancer is a leading cause of death (over 200 000 deaths per year, and rising) the UK has fewer consultants in clinical oncology per head of population than anywhere in the developed world apart from Portugal and Turkey. On average our consultants see well over twice the number of patients per year than our colleagues in Europe or the United States; even the recommended workload statistic from the RCR of 350 new patients annually would still be well above the 200–250 seen by American or European radiotherapists. At present we are nowhere near, with an average of 560 new patients per year, 12 new cancer patients every working week.