Experts highlight need for earlier diagnosis and improved access to treatments, as figures show UK healthcare spend is lower than the European average

Cancer survival rates in the UK continue to lag behind those of other European countries, research suggests, with experts flagging the need for earlier diagnosis and improved access to treatments.

The report is the latest to highlight the problem, with previous research suggesting that UK survival rates for breast cancer are a decade behind countries including France and Sweden.

“It is quite clear that outcomes in the vast majority of cancers are not where they need to be in the UK,” said Richard Torbett, executive director of the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry (ABPI), which funded the latest study.

The research, lead by the Swedish Institute for Health Economics, expands on previous work which looked at a number of studies to assess the state of cancer care across Europe between 1995 and 2014.

The latest findings, launched with a website to showcase the data, offer an in-depth analysis of the UK situation, revealing that the number of new cases of cancer between 1995 and 2012 increased by 31% in total across Europe, and 12% in the UK.

The study suggests that although cancer survival rates have increased over the years, the UK’s improvements often lag behind those of other European countries.



With the exception of a type of skin cancer known as melanoma, the average adult five-year survival rates for patients diagnosed with nine other types of cancer between 2000 and 2007, were lower in the UK than the European average. While the five-year survival rates for colon cancer hit 58% on average across Europe, the figure for the UK was 52%.



What’s more, the UK was second only to Bulgaria for the worst five-year survival rates for lung cancer, with UK figures for patients diagnosed between 2000-2007 also below those for countries including Norway and Sweden for cases diagnosed around a decade earlier.

Analysis of 2014 figures further showed that while the UK spent 9.1% of its GDP on healthcare in 2014, the European average was 10.1%. Looking specifically at cancer spending, compared to countries including France, Denmark, Austria and Ireland, the UK spent less on cancer per person, with Germany spending almost twice as much per head.

“That investment covers everything: that is, from diagnosis through to surgery, radiotherapy, medicines are obviously included in that – but so is everything else,” said Torbett. “It is not particularly surprising that, if there is significant under-investment, the UK isn’t seeing the scale and speed of benefits that are seen in some of these other European countries.”

The report also highlighted that the UK is lagging behind other large European countries, including France and Germany, in the uptake of new drugs.



With cancer now a greater disease burden than cardiovascular disease in the UK, experts say more needs to be done.

“While we have seen really big improvements in our survival in areas like breast cancer, prostate cancer and testicular cancer, there are some other cancers like lung, pancreatic, brain and oesophageal cancers where we really haven’t made as much progress as we would like,” said Emlyn Samuel, senior policy manager at Cancer Research UK.



While Samuel stressed that improving early diagnosis is an important part of improving survival rates, he added that it is also crucial to make sure that new drugs and other treatments are available and accessible to patients. “The report shows that the UK is slower at adopting innovative cancer medicines than other countries and that is a concern, and something we want to see movement on,” he said.



Lynda Thomas, chief executive at Macmillan Cancer Support, agreed but added that it isn’t enough to look only at survival rates. “It’s crucial that patients don’t simply survive but are supported to have the best possible quality of life they can,” she said.

A spokeswoman for NHS England said cancer survival is at a “record high” in England, and pointed out that a report, commissioned by NHS England and published in 2015 by an independent cancer taskforce, highlighted that improving cancer outcomes in the UK was not simply a case of pushing more funding into the pharmaceutical industry.



“The ABPI is hardly a disinterested commentator and it should have the intellectual honesty to acknowledge what the independent cancer taskforce set out, namely that the biggest opportunities for further improvements in UK cancer survival currently come mainly from earlier diagnosis, and modern radiotherapy and surgery, as against just higher spending on cancer drugs with a modest impact on life expectancy,” she said.