A swimmer's plea just won brain-cancer patients a faster road to new treatments

Archie Goodburn is 25, a Scottish swimmer living with brain tumours he first learned about at 22 — and today his campaigning reached the top table. After his heartfelt public plea for faster progress, he met the Prime Minister and the Health Secretary at Downing Street, and the government answered with four steps the same day: an expert review reporting within three months, a national action plan to move new treatments from the lab to patients faster, a dedicated national brain-cancer clinical lead, and a quicker review of the rules for rare-disease medicines, to be finished in two years instead of three. Patients, families and charities will also help design a push to get more people onto clinical trials. Leading charities thanked Archie for his determination and welcomed the package as a real platform for change.

SDG 3 · Good health and well-being — Mechanism: policy reform