New guidance from the World Health Organisation (WHO), launched ahead of World Cancer Day observed on February 4, aims to improve the chances of survival for patients by ensuring that health services can focus on diagnosing and treating the disease earlier.
New WHO figures released last week indicate that each year 8.8mn people die from cancer, mostly in low- and middle-income countries. Many cancer cases are diagnosed too late. Even in countries with optimal health systems and services, many cancer cases are diagnosed at an advanced stage, when they are harder to treat successfully.
Diagnosing cancer in late stages, and the inability to provide treatment, condemns many people to unnecessary suffering and early death, as pointed out by Dr Etienne Krug, director of WHO’s Department for the Management of Noncommunicable Diseases, Disability, Violence and Injury Prevention.
By taking the steps to implement WHO’s new guidance, healthcare planners can improve early diagnosis of cancer and ensure prompt treatment, especially for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancers. This will result in more people surviving cancer. It will also be less expensive to treat and cure cancer patients.
All countries can take steps to improve early diagnosis of cancer, according to WHO’s new Guide to Cancer – Early Diagnosis. The three steps are improving public awareness of different cancer symptoms and encouraging people to seek care when these arise; investing in strengthening and equipping health services and training health workers so they can conduct accurate and timely diagnostics; and ensuring people living with cancer can access safe and effective treatment, including pain relief, without incurring prohibitive personal or financial hardship.
Challenges are clearly greater in low- and middle-income countries, which have lower abilities to provide access to effective diagnostic services, including imaging, laboratory tests, and pathology – all key to helping detect cancers and plan treatment. Countries also currently have different capacities to refer cancer patients to the appropriate level of care. The WHO is encouraging these countries to prioritise basic, high-impact and low-cost cancer diagnosis and treatment services. The organisation also recommends reducing the need for people to pay for care out of their own pockets, which prevents many from seeking help in the first place.
Detecting cancer early also greatly reduces cancer’s financial impact: not only is the cost of treatment much less in cancer’s early stages, but people can also continue to work and support their families if they can access effective treatment in time. In 2010, the total annual economic cost of cancer through healthcare expenditure and loss of productivity was estimated at $1.16tn.
Strategies to improve early diagnosis can be readily built into health systems at a low cost. In turn, effective early diagnosis can help detect cancer in patients at an earlier stage, enabling treatment that is generally more effective, less complex, and less expensive. Studies in high-income countries have shown that treatment for cancer patients diagnosed early are two to four times less expensive compared to treating people diagnosed with cancer at more advanced stages.
Cancer is now responsible for almost one in six deaths globally. More than 14mn people develop cancer every year, and this figure is projected to rise to over 21mn by 2030. There needs to be progress on strengthening early cancer diagnosis and providing basic treatment for all.
