East, west European cancer survival gap widens

Cancer survival rates throughout Europe are improving - but the gap between eastern and western Europe is widening. That's according to a new study by EUROCARE. It shows people living in Austria, France and Switzerland have the best chance of beating the disease while those in Slovakia, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and Poland have the lowest. What accounts for this gap? We ask one of the authors of the EUROCARE report, Professor Michael Coleman, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine

"Treatment tends to be more effective the earlier the disease is caught - at the point of treatment. So later stage of diagnosis is one powerful explanation. Another is access to optimal treatments. Some cancers are more treatable than others and if we took testicular cancer, cancer of the male testicle as one example, the survival rate in Estonia is particularly low on a European scale and our Estonian colleagues tell us that the most effective drug for treating this kind of cancer was not available in Estonia until recently and also in other eastern European countries."

Would it also be about whether people are worried about going and getting treatment, I mean affordable treatment? If people are worried about how much it is going to cost?

" The reluctance to go and see a doctor and get the cancer treated, if it is a lot of money, is only one part of the equation. It's how individuals around Europe respond to symptoms of a possible malignancy, if you like, how educated people are about their bodies, when things go wrong, or when they do, what they feel like. It's that kind of insight into ones body that almost certainly influences how quickly individuals start the so-called cancer journey, that is leave their home to go and see their primary care physician."

Is investment in public awareness campaigns, advising people about getting checks, whether it's breast cancer checks or any of the common cancers, is that a key to getting the survival rates up?

" Public education works when there is a good early diagnostic test and when an early diagnosis actually increases the patients chance of survival. The most graphic example of this is mammographic screening for breast cancer in women where there is very strong evidence from proper trials that a well organized mass screening campaign for the whole population saves lives."

For the countries of Eastern and Central Europe who's economies are developing, who are now coming into the European Union, and where public finances are scarce for just about everything, where's the money best spent if the survival rates are to be improved?

" I think, there are some cancers, breast cancer, colon cancer, rectal cancer, where they are very common, where they are potentially, for many of them, successfully treatable and where earlier diagnosis has a very clear impact on outcome. And for all of those reasons those particular common and moderately treatable and even successfully treatable cancers, would I think be targets for a rapid improvement in investment and care, if that were possible."