The Health Department has funded a planning team to begin work in December 2026, but says full implementation depends on future health funding. The work is expected to take around a year.
Northern Ireland’s Department of Health says there is no definitive timeline for fully implementing targeted lung cancer screening because it depends on future health funding. The decision leaves people at high risk without a settled date for access.
In December 2024, then-health minister Mike Nesbitt’s three-year health and social care plan committed to a program by April 2027, subject to additional funding. The department has funded a Public Health Agency project team to establish what resources and funding screening would need, BBC Health said. Planning is due to begin in December 2026 and is expected to take around a year.
In 2022, the UK National Screening Committee recommended targeted screening across all four UK nations for people aged 55 to 74 at high risk of lung cancer, including current and former smokers. Screening uses low-dose computed tomography (CT) scans to look for cancer before symptoms develop.
The committee recommended providing screening alongside services to help people stop smoking. Its evidence summary says low-dose CT screening reduces lung cancer deaths and is acceptable to patients and professionals when it has adequate resources and quality assurance.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in Northern Ireland. Queen’s University Belfast figures show about 1,370 diagnoses a year.
Wendy Anderson, a respiratory consultant who leads Northern Ireland’s lung cancer network, said screening could increase the proportion of patients eligible for treatment intended to cure them from about 30% to 80%. She estimated that an additional 100 people a year could survive lung cancer or avoid it altogether, and said screening could improve outcomes in more deprived communities.
Anderson said survival had improved but remained poor. When she began working as a consultant, fewer than one in 10 of her patients survived five years; she estimated that the figure was now around one in four. Reducing smoking remains the most important way to prevent lung cancer, she said. She added that stopping smoking also reduces the risk of other respiratory diseases, heart attacks and strokes.
Joan McConville, a former teacher from Banbridge, believes screening might have caught her cancer earlier and potentially improved her outcome. She was diagnosed in 2023 and had surgery to remove the cancer, but it returned in 2026 and spread to her lymph nodes and ribs. Surgery was no longer an option, and doctors recommended radiotherapy and chemotherapy.
England has begun rolling out screening and expects full national coverage by 2030. Wales has announced a national program and expects its first invitations in 2028. Scotland has been conducting pilots but does not yet have a program.
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