UK trailing Europe in cancer care

The UK is trailing behind the rest of Europe in the treatment of cancer, with British patients having worse survival rates after five years compared to a European average.

A new report, commissioned by the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), revealed that UK cancer survival rates trial behind the European average in nine out of 10 cancers, with melanoma the exception, and UK ovarian cancer survival rates the worst across Europe.

While the European average for ovarian cancer survival is 40.8 per cent, the rate in the UK for patients surviving for five years or more sits at 34 per cent. This is a similar trend in the statistics for lung cancer, where the Uk average of eight per cent is much lower than the European average of 12.62 per cent.

According to separate reports, the UK spends over 20 per cent less per person on cancer than the top five EU economies, as well as 10 per cent less of its GDP on healthcare than the rest of the EU. This is despite the fact that, across Europe, increased investment in cancer care has led to improved patient outcomes.

Richard Torbett, executive director at the ABPI, said: "The report shows the impact that comparatively lower levels of UK investment in cancer is having on the quality of care available to British patients. We are seeing that investment in cancer diagnosis and treatments like surgery, medicine and radiotherapy, in countries across Europe is leading to better survival rates and we have to ask whether this should be the ambition for the NHS.

“This should be a wake-up call for the UK to refocus the way we tackle cancer across the board. To make progress we need to look at investing more money to hasten the implementation of the Cancer Strategy; we need to speed up, not slow down, patient access to cost-effective medicines in the NHS and we need to create a more ambitious plan for using real world evidence to shine a light on cancer treatment outcomes."