When it comes to cancer, it's both good and bad news in the United Kingdom. Although more people are living and surviving cancer, it's also putting a lot of pressure and demanding huge investments for both the charities and the National Health Service (NHS).
In a recent report of MacMillan Cancer Support, one of the charity organizations in the country, it's expected that around 2.5 million will survive and live with cancer this year, an increase of half a million over the last half a decade.
This is good news since it means more people are coping well with their disease due to new treatments available and cancer screening tests for early detection. Aside from these, the aging population is seen as a factor. This is because even if more young people are diagnosed with cancer, it still affects the older population. Hence, as there are more people getting older, the incidence of cancer cases is also expected to go up.
News of longer recovery is good. However, this is also a problem since NHS needs to cope with the increased demand. After all, it is responsible for providing top-notch service and quality care to patients to ensure they can live and survive the disease for as long as they can. This also means that the demand for charities are including MacMillan will go up and their services will be considered to be more significant and urgent.
To make matters even worse, about 8 drugs for cancer are expected to be delisted by NHS. In other words, these drugs will no longer be supported by government funds.
It can be recalled that a funding system has been set up to help finance medications of cancer patients. Called the Cancer Drugs Fund, it had an initial budget of £200 million in 2011. It later went up to £280 million. The budget wasn't enough.
NHS still has to release the official list of delisted drugs, but about 6 of them are meant for breast cancer and Jevtana for prostate.
