Global cancer crisis flagged in report
pharmafile | October 3, 2013 | News story | Medical Communications, Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | IPRI, Roche, wprld prevention alliance
A new report advocates the formation of a major industry-backed initiative to tackle the world’s growing cancer burden.
Sponsored by the International Prevention Research Institute (IPRI), the World Prevention Alliance and an educational grant from Roche, the paper indicates that recent advances in oncology have failed to benefit many developing countries – and warns that governments could be overwhelmed as cancer diagnoses increases.
India, China and Nigeria are expected to be hit particular hard in the coming decades. The first two countries are likely to register populations of 1.45 billion each by 2028, while the third is predicted to have more inhabitants than the US by 2050.
Researchers suggest that these demographic jumps coupled with increasingly westernised lifestyles could contribute to a problematic rise in cancer incidence.
IPRI president Peter Boyle, said: “Many parts of the world are already unable to cope with the current situation and are totally unprepared for the future growth of the cancer problem.”
To address this problem, the report’s authors advocate the formation of a major public-private partnership, backed by governments, NGOs and the pharma industry.
One such body, the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and AIDS, was formed in 2002 and has been credited with making substantial progress in tackling its target conditions around the world.
However, as Reuters reports, similar success with cancer would require considerably more resources. Boyle suggested a greater contribution of funding, medicines and expertise by the pharma industry would be necessary.
He explained: “There’s no single source of philanthropy, there’s no government, there’s no company, there’s no single institution that can afford that sort of investment.”
He continued: “The current model of financing is broke. We need to fix it. We need radical solutions.”
The report was released at the European Cancer Congress 2013 in Amsterdam, and complimented the findings of another paper presented earlier in the weekend linking bigger healthcare budgets to better cancer survival rates in the EU.
According to the World Health Organisation, cancer is one of many diseases contributing to a growing global burden of disease. Other increasingly problematic conditions include diabetes and ischaemic heart disease.
Hugh McCafferty
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