Thousands of British cancer patients are dying early because NHS survival rates are trailing behind the rest of the world, a report has found. The largest study of cancer survival ever conducted puts the UK towards the bottom of global league tables for several common cancers.
Health charities last night called for urgent action to close the 'appalling' and 'unacceptable' gulf with other nations, blaming slow diagnosis and poor treatment. While British cancer survival has improved slightly over the past 20 years, the country is being left behind by huge advances in other countries.
The study, published in The Lancet medical journal, analysed the records of 37.5million patients with 18 of the most common cancers, comparing survival rates for 71 countries.
The UK falls in the bottom half of the league table for seven cancers and only comes in the top ten for two. For years campaigners have warned that British survival rates are way behind those in Europe and the US, and studies suggest 10,000 deaths could be prevented each year if the UK merely hit the European average.
But the analysis shows Britain is also left trailing by developing nations such as Jordan, Puerto Rico, Algeria and Ecuador.
The data, from 2010 to 2014, shows that only 6.8 per cent of British pancreatic cancer patients survive for five years after diagnosis, putting the UK 47th out of the 56 countries that had full data for that cancer.
The pancreatic cancer survival rate in the US is nearly twice as high, at 11.5 per cent. But the UK is also surpassed by Latvia, South Africa and Argentina. For stomach cancer the UK comes 46th out of 60 countries, with only 20.7 per cent surviving five years, worse than Romania, Turkey and Malaysia. <!-- Global site tag (gtag.js) - Google Analytics -->
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