Ireland’s cancer survival rates lag behind other EU countries with access to new drugs ‘limited’

Between 2012 and 2020, 10 new cancer medicines annually were approved by the European Medicines Agency (EMA).

Some 51pc were reimbursed by the HSE at the beginning of this year, the new study by the Swedish Institute for Health Economics (IHE) for the Irish Pharmaceutical Healthcare Association (IPHA) found.

The average time to the reimbursement decision following EMA approval was almost two years.

The study, ‘Comparator Report on Cancer in Ireland – Disease Burden, Costs and Access to Medicines’ suggests faster access to new medicines will be an important element of improving Ireland’s cancer survival rates.

The study points out cancer is Ireland’s leading cause of mortality, accounting for more than one in four deaths.

It said survival rates in all major cancers have improved since the 1990s and it saidthe most successful example is multiple myeloma, with the five-year survival rate increased by 37pc – from 27pc in the 1990s – to 64pc between 2014 and 2018.

However, in many cases Ireland lags behind survival rates seen in other EU countries.

It ranks last in survival rates of breast and ovarian cancer.

It said hundreds of deaths could be avoided each year if Ireland achieved similar survival rates to the best-performing EU countries.

As the population here has aged and grown there has been a doubling of newly diagnosed cancer cases since 1995 to 24,000 cases annually in 2017-2019.

The projections are another 15,000 additional new cancer cases and 8,000 more annual cancer deaths expected by 2040. The International Agency for Research on Cancer, shows demographic pressures alone could raise cancer diagnoses annually to 42,000 cases by 2040. By then, the annual number of cancer deaths could rise from 10,000 to 18,000.

But it suggests better cancer care could save up to 3,500 lives in 2040 alone.

Dr Austin Duffy, a consultant oncologist in the Mater Hospital, Dublin said: “Clearly, we have made important strides in the treatment of cancer in Ireland.

“Survival is improving but more cases are diagnosed due to our ageing and increasing population. What is concerning is that Irish patients clearly have much slower access to new medicines, some of which can have a very dramatic impact on their conditions and prognoses.”

A spokesman for the HSE said the HSE Drugs Group is the national committee in place to make recommendations on the pricing and reimbursement of medicines.

“The membership of the HSE Drugs Group includes public interest members.

“The decision-making authority in the HSE is the HSE executive management team.”

It decides on the basis of all the demands it is faced with – across all services – whether it can fund a new medicine, or new uses of an existing medicine, from the resources that have been provided to it.

The HSE made gross payments of €190m under the high-tech arrangements in relation to cancer medicines this year.

Another gross reimbursement payment of €84m to public hospitals was made during this time.

The spokesman said the HSE robustly assesses applications for pricing and reimbursement to make sure that it can stretch available resources as far as possible and to deliver the best value in relation to each medicine and ultimately more medicines to Irish citizens and patients.

Decisions are made on “objective, scientific and economic grounds”.