UK cancer poverty gap widens

Cancer patients are living longer than ever before but the survival gap between rich and poor is widening, British researchers said on Tuesday.

The team, from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, measured survival in 2.2 million cancer patients diagnosed in England and Wales between 1986 and 1999 and followed up to the end of 2001.Each patient was assigned to one of five socioeconomic categories, from the most affluent to the most deprived, according to where they lived.The findings, published in the British Journal of Cancer, show that overall survival in England and Wales improved for 15 out of 16 cancers in men, and for 13 out of 17 cancers in women.However, the survival difference between rich and poor, far from narrowing as it is supposed to under the government’s cancer plan, increased for 12 of 16 cancers in men and for 9 of 17 cancers in women.The widening of the “deprivation gap” was statistically significant for cancers of the oesophagus, colon, rectum, larynx and prostate in men and for cancers of the colon and rectum, and myeloma in women.Over three successive 5-year periods: 1986-1990, 1991-1995 and 1996-1999, this gap widened by an average of 2.4% every 5 years in men and 2.5% in women.Lead investigator, Professor Michel Coleman, said poor people had increasingly been left behind the rich, but the reasons were complex and unclear. “Part of it relates to later diagnosis in the less affluent groups but that does not account for all of the survival difference,” he told APM.In the case of cancer of the larynx, for example, there is now a 17% gap in survival between the richest and poorest men, but he had “not the faintest idea why”.Prof. Coleman said very few cancer patients are treated exclusively in the private sector in Britain, so that is unlikely to explain the differences.Professor John Northover, Director of the Cancer Research UK Colorectal Cancer Unit, said in a statement that poor patients might not have benefited equally from developments in diagnosis, specialist surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.”The task now is to shorten that lag by improving equality of access to the best treatments and ensuring that less affluent patients actually take up new treatment opportunities as they become available,” Prof. Northover said.”Another lesson from this study is that to make full use of the opportunity of a national screening programme, we will have to especially target the deprived in society,” he added.(Source: Reuters Health: Richard Woodman: March 2004: Oncolink)