Cancer in Ireland – Disease Burden, Costs and Access to Medicines

This report provides key statistics about cancer in Ireland. It builds on IHE Comparator Report 2019:7 and provides a comparison of Ireland with other selected countries in Europe. The key findings are the following: The disease burden of cancer: • Cancer has become the leading cause of death in Ireland over the past two decades. • The number of newly diagnosed cancer cases in Ireland has doubled from 12,000 to 24,000 cases since 1995, driven mostly by demographic changes. The economic burden of cancer: • The economic burden of cancer exceeds €320 per capita per year, of which €200 are health expenditure and €120 are costs from productivity losses. • Official aggregated data on health spending on cancer are absent in Ireland, but estimates indicate that per capita spending on cancer in Ireland is similar to the EU-15 average. • The indirect costs of cancer have been decreasing in Ireland since 2000 due to better patient outcomes. Outcomes of cancer patients and spending: • Cancer survival has improved in Ireland, yet survival rates in many cancer types are lower than in other EU-15 countries resulting in hundreds of avoidable deaths every year. • Across Europe, there is a clear pattern of countries spending more on cancer care achieving higher survival rates, which makes spending in Ireland appear less efficient. Access to cancer medicines: • Time to patient access of new EMA-approved cancer medicines is exceptionally long in Ireland compared with the EU-15 countries, reaching almost 2 years. • Once reimbursed, the use of modern cancer medicines in Ireland is close to the EU-15 average, however. • The lack of patient access to modern, effective cancer medicines in Ireland leads to a great loss in life years and quality of life of cancer patients.