Global survival rates for cancer patients have increased but are significantly different by country

survival rates for cancer patients around the world continue to rise overall, but there are significant differences between countries, according to a new study published on January 31st by British researchers.
An international team led by academics from the University of London's School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine report in the new issue of the British Medical Journal
that they analyzed the five-year survival rates of more than 37.5 million adult and child cancer patients between 2000 and 2014 based on a large collection of cancer data from 71 countries and territories. This is the rate at which cancer patients can survive for more than five years after treatment.
show that overall survival rates for cancer patients around the world continue to improve. In the UK, for example, the five-year survival rate for breast cancer patients rose from 80 per cent to 86 per cent over that period. In countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Norway, Iceland and Sweden, patient survival rates have remained relatively high for most types of cancer over the past 15 years, the report said.
, the differences between countries are still significant. Between 2010 and 2014, the five-year survival rate for female breast cancer patients in the United States and Australia was 90 per cent, compared with 66 per cent in India. Country-specific differences are more pronounced in some childhood cancer types, such as denmark and Sweden, which had five-year survival rates of about 80 per cent between 2010 and 2014, but Mexico and Brazil, which had less than 40 per cent.
addition, survival rates for some types of cancer remain low. Even in 2014, pancreatic cancer was still a deadly disease in all the countries surveyed, with a five-year survival rate of less than 15 percent.
Michelle Coleman, a professor at the University of London's School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and one of the report's authors, said more collaboration is needed in the international medical community to better understand the risk factors for such deadly cancers so that they can be better prevented, diagnosed and treated early. (Source: Zhang Jiawei, Xinhua News Agency