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

Thomas Hofmarcher, Oskar Ericson and Peter Lindgren
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Oskar Ericson: IHE - The Swedish Institute for Health Economics
Peter Lindgren: IHE - The Swedish Institute for Health Economics

No 2022:4, IHE Report / IHE Rapport from IHE - The Swedish Institute for Health Economics

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: IHE; health economics; Cancer; Ireland; Epidemiology; Costs; Medicines (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 68 pages
Date: 2022
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