The number of children dying from cancer has fallen by almost 60 per cent in the last 40 years, according to a new analysis published today.
Cancer Research UK said that the overall death rate dropped from 73.4 per million children between 1966 and 1970 to 31.9 per million children between 2001 and 2005.
In the late 1960s, fewer than three in ten children survived beyond five years, but that figure now stands at almost 80 per cent.
Dr Pam Kearns, director of the Cancer Research UK Children’s Cancer Trials Team, said: “More children are beating cancer thanks to the transformation and improvements of treatments over the last 30 years, with ways of treating the disease offering greater hope to children diagnosed with cancer.
“We need to continue this work so that every child who is diagnosed with cancer has the best possible chance of beating the disease.”
Earlier this year the charity opened the Children’s Cancer Trials Team (CCTT) within the Cancer Research UK Clinical Trials Unit at the University of Birmingham to bring new and more effective therapies to children with cancer.
In December 2009, Cancer Research UK launched a clinical trial for children with advanced neuroblastoma, which brought a pioneering treatment called immunotherapy to the UK.
Dr Lesley Walker, director of cancer information at Cancer Research UK, said: “These new figures show that years of hard work by researchers across the world are paying off.
“This research will lead to even more success stories for children diagnosed with cancer in the future.”
In the UK about 1,500 children a year are diagnosed with cancer, with leukaemia being the most commonly diagnosed disease. It is estimated that there are 26,000 childhood cancer survivors in Britain.
Almost 90 per cent of children diagnosed with a lymphoma today beat the disease, compared with 40 per cent in the 1960s. The success rate for leukaemia now stands about 80 per cent, compared with less than 10 per cent in the late 1960s.
But some cancers have not seen such improvements; the five year survival rate is 44 per cent for certain types of gliomas, a type of brain tumour.
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