France, Spain, Austria and Switzerland are among the best countries in Europe to obtain new cancer drugs, a major conference was told yesterday.
Britain ranks with eastern European countries in being slow to take up new treatments for cancer, the conference of the European Society for Medical Oncology heard.
Dr Nils Wilking, from the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, said Britain was "low and slow" compared with other wealthy European countries in taking up new cancer drugs.
Dr Wilking told the conference, in Stockholm, there was no evidence whether patients in the countries that were swift to adopt new drugs fared better against cancer than Britons and others.
He said: "Of the major western EU countries, the UK tends to come out both low and slow with a few exceptions.
"Overall, Austria, Switzerland and France bring the new drugs out more quickly. France also has an especially high general uptake of most new drugs. Spain is somewhat lower and slower but was a ’leader‘ in the early part of the 2000s."
He added: "We need much better epidemiological data in order to evaluate the link between access to cancer drugs and outcome."
He said as well as drugs "patients need to have full access to the most innovative technologies in prevention, screening, surgery, radiotherapy and drugs."
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