In a research carried out by EU to ascertain the economic impact of cancer, the disease was discovered to be very costly as it has recently cost most European Union countries 126bn Euros a year. As reported by the charity Cancer Research UK, the disease presents a huge financial burden.
The figures quoted by Lancet Oncology included money for buying drugs, paying for health care services and the money spent by families whenever they had a sick relative. Comparing the different types of cancer, Lung cancer was the most expensive.
The University of Oxford and King’s College analysed this figure that pertained 29 EU countries in 2009. From the quoted 126bn euros, 51bn euro equivalent to $43bn was particularly for health care services, which mostly included the costs for drugs and the charges paid for the treatment services.
52bn euros equal to $44bn was allocated to reduced productivity frequently activated by immature deaths and low work concentration due to the sickness while families spent 23bn euros equal to $19.5 to care for cancer victims.
When comparing the amount of money spent on treating this disease per person, rich countries like Germany and Luxembourg tend to use more money than various Eastern Europe countries such as Bulgaria and Lithuania.
Lung cancer accounted for more than 10% of all cancer costs in Europe. Decreased productivity caused by immature deaths was observed to be very common since lung cancer is known to infect people at their early ages.
Comparing the economic impacts of cancer to dementia and cardiovascular diseases, the later is seen to be more costly.
A research that was conducted involving 15 Western Europe nations, 169bn euros equal to £144bn is spent annually to treat cardiovascular diseases such as stroke and high blood pressure while 189bn euros equivalent to £169bn is spent to treat dementia.
When infected with dementia you need to spend huge sums of money for long-term care, while cardiovascular illnesses are very wide that a high number of people are likely to be affected by these illnesses as compared to cancer.
From his research, Dr Ramon Luengo-Fernandez, who is of the Health Economics Research Centre at the University of Oxford stated that a public research funding for the needs of the different diseases had to be done and more money allocated to diseases that had the greatest economic burden.
