Danish cancer survival rates see significant boost

Denmark closing gap on Nordic neighbours in new international report

The Danish health services are improving when it comes to diagnosing and treating cancer, according to the new international report ‘Global surveillance of trends in cancer survival 2000–14 (CONCORD-3)’.

Norway, Sweden and Finland have long been ahead of the Danes when it comes to cancer survival rates, but Denmark is rapidly catching up.

“For most cancers, five-year net survival remains among the highest in the world in the USA and Canada, in Australia and New Zealand, and in Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden. For many cancers, Denmark is closing the survival gap with the other Nordic countries,” the report revealed in its summary.

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In particular, prostate cancer survival rates have improved considerably from 63 out of 100 some 13 years ago to 85 out of 100 today.

The advancement in cancer survival rates has come in tandem with investment in better equipment, along with shorter waiting times for diagnostics and treatment over the past 15 years.

“It’s fantastic that we’ve managed to turn the statistics around in just 15 years. We’re still not quite as good as the other Nordic countries, but we’ve really made up a lot of ground,” Gerda Engholm, a senior statistician with cancer organisation Kræftens Bekæmpelse, told Videnskab.dk.

Engholm contended that the two cancer packages that the politicians pushed through in 2007 and 2009 have been instrumental in the Danish progress.

The findings have been published in noted scientific journal The Lancet (here in English).

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