According to Britain’s cancer tsar, the governments £200m cancer fund will not improve cancer survival rates much. Drugs against cancer cost thousands of pounds per patient, but they have a small impact on the extension of life. The United Kingdom has a bigger rate of patients who die prematurely in comparison to other countries. The UK performs worse than Australia, Canada and Sweden in a research that only concerned six countries. The main reason for this tragic fact is that the UK has a poor awareness of symptoms and a late diagnosis by GP’s. Another reason is that many drugs are more widely available in Europe than in the UK. Professor Richards says that the £200m spent on drugs will not improve the cancer survival rates. It is better to invest the money in making GP’s aware of the symptoms so that cancer can be diagnosed in an earlier stage. Fortunately, there is an awareness campaign starting in January 2011 of £10m.
It was a surprise to me that the UK was so far behind on diagnosing. One would expect the medical education system to be similar in most countries, especially the ‘richer’ countries of Western Europe. I also think it is strange, that when it was clear where the problem lies, that only a small amount of money is spent on solving the problem. There is no balance in the amount of money spent to for curing cancer. If £200m is spent on something that does not pay off, but when only £10m is spent on awareness of symptoms to make a diagnosis, there is something wrong with the dividing of money. More money should be spent on giving the GP’s more knowledge and more attention should be paid to detect symptoms, that starts with the people themselves. There should also be campaign that lets people know they should be aware of cancer and its symptoms. Money alone doesn’t cure cancer.
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