Europeans get unequal cancer care -Swedish study
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European patients continue to receive unequal access to cancer treatment depending on where they live, according to new findings from experts at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute published on Friday.
The latest research by Nils Wilking, a clinical oncologist, and Bengt Jonsson, a health economist, updates earlier work undertaken by the two cancer specialists in 2005 and 2007.
Their analysis reveals wide gaps in relative survival rates across Europe, reflecting differing levels of access to modern - and expensive - cancer treatments.
In Sweden, for example, 60.3 percent of men and 61.7 percent of women diagnosed with cancer survive compared with only 37.7 percent of men and 49.3 percent of women in the Czech Republic.
Overall, patients in Austria, France and Switzerland have the broadest access to newer cancer treatments, while Poland, the Czech Republic and Britain lag behind.
“The inequalities - highlighted in our original report in 2005 - still remain,” Jonsson said in a statement.
“For patients and society this is a real concern, as expectations are that all patients in Europe should have equal opportunity to access these treatments, particularly when evidence shows that access to cancer treatment is linked to an improvement in outcome.”
The research was supported by an unrestricted grant from European drugmakers, which have long campaigned against curbs on access to expensive new cancer drugs in Europe.
Cancer is the fastest-growing section of the drugs market but the use of pricey medicines - like Avastin and Erbitux from Roche and Merck KGaA - is restricted in some European countries, where state-backed healthcare systems are struggling with escalating costs.
LONDON (Reuters)
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