UK: the cost of cancer

Total cost of the disease is £18.33 billion a year

Policy Exchange has launched the most comprehensive study to have taken place in the UK researching the total costs of cancer (click here >> to access the report).

Taking into account health-care costs (£5.49 billion), costs to individuals and families (£0.08 billion) and losses in productivity (£12.76 billion), the report estimates the total cost of cancer in 2008 to have been £18.33 billion. By 2020 this could rise to £24.72 billion.

The UK currently has a cancer death rate 6% higher than the European average.  However, if the survival rates were improved in England to a level commensurate with the best in Europe, on a cumulative basis by 2020, 71,500 lives could be saved and total costs could be reduced by £10 billion.

The report found that the most likely causes for the UK’s high mortality rate were late diagnosis, poor survival rates for older people and those in deprived communities, and relatively poor take-up of new treatments and technologies.

The author of the report and Head of Policy Exchange’s Health Unit, Henry Featherstone said, ‘Over the next ten years, tens of thousands of lives could be saved by improving cancer care to levels on a par with the best European countries.’

Source: Policy Exchange Research Note, 17 February 2010.

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