Two in Three to last Five years by 2020!
That’s the aim of Cancer Research UK who’ve set themselves some pretty aggressive targets! It come on the back of new figures which show a patient with cancer now has a 46.2% chance of being alive ten years after diagnosis compared with 23.6% 30 years ago.
The goals in full for 2020 are:
- Three-quarters of people will know how to reduce their risk of cancer
- Four million fewer adults will be smokers
- Risk of cancer in under 75s will fall from one in four to one in five
- Two-thirds of cancer will be diagnosed early when it can be treated
- Half of all patients will have better targeted treatments with fewer side effects
- Two-thirds of cancer patients will be alive after five years
- Difference in risk of dying from cancer between rich and poor will be reduced by half
- Nine out of ten patients will get better information
- We will have a detailed understanding of the causes and changes in the body in two-thirds of all cases of cancer
- Rapid progress will continue after 2020
Survival ranges currently range from 2.5% for pancreatic cancer to 95% for testicular cancer. 66% of patients with breast cancer are alive 20 years after diagnosis but there has been no improvement in survival for lung cancer.
“We don’t generally use an overall survival figure for cancer, partly because it is not a helpful number to individual cancer patients anxious to know their own chances.
“But since the new goals relate to cancer as a whole, we feel it is important to define a simple baseline for watching progress.”