Financial crisis may’ve caused 500K cancer deaths worldwide

UN health agency gets OK for revamp of emergency response

PARIS, May 26, (Agencies): The global financial crisis may have caused an additional 500,000 cancer deaths from 20082010, a new study said Thursday, with patients locked out of treatment because of unemployment and healthcare cuts.

The figures were extrapolated from an observed rise in cancer deaths for every percentage increase in unemployment, and every drop in public healthcare spending.

“From our analysis we estimate that the economic crisis was associated with over 260,000 excess cancer deaths in the OECD (34-member Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development) alone, between 2008-2010,” study author Mahiben Maruthappu of Imperial College London told AFP.

“This suggests that there could have been well over 500,000 excess cancer deaths worldwide during this time.”

For the European Union alone, the estimate was 160,000 additional deaths -- a term used to describe people who would not otherwise have died.

For the United States, the estimate was 18,000 and for France 1,500. For Spain and Britain, which provided universal healthcare, no additional deaths were calculated.

The study was published in The Lancet medical journal.

“Cancer is a leading cause of death worldwide so understanding how economic changes affect cancer survival is crucial,” Maruthappu said.

In 2012, cancer caused some 8.2 million deaths.

“We found that increased unemployment was associated with an increased cancer mortality, but that universal health coverage protected against these effects,” Maruthappu said.

“This was especially the case for treatable cancers including breast, prostate and colorectal cancer.”

The researchers used World Health Organization and World Bank statistics on more than 70 countries with over two billion inhabitants to analyse the link between unemployment, public healthcare spending and cancer mortality.

Analysed

They analysed the trend over 20 years from 1990 to 2010.

They found that every one-percent increase in unemployment was associated with 0.37 additional cancer deaths per 100,000 people.

Every one-percent drop in healthcare spending was associated with 0.0053 additional deaths per 100,000 people.

They then used this data to extrapolate additional deaths from 2008-2010, noting that the economic crisis saw a “substantial rise” in unemployment and cuts in healthcare spending in many countries.

“In countries without universal health coverage, access to healthcare can often be provided via an employment package,” said co-author Rifat Atun of Harvard University.

“Without employment, patients may be diagnosed late, and face poor or delayed treatment.”

In a comment on the study, US-based researchers Graham Colditz and Karen Emmons wrote that the data “make a strong case for universal health coverof age and its protective effect on cancer mortality.”

Stung by failures in its response to Ebola, the World Health Organization is revamping how it responds to emergencies to become nimbler, more reactive and more operational in “one of the most profound transformations” ever at the UN health agency.

Member states agreed to the changes Wednesday at the World Health Assembly in Geneva, aiming to streamline decision-making and put logistical and medical teams on the ground faster amid wars, natural disasters and outbreaks of viruses like Ebola, Zika or yellow fever, officials said.

A WHO statement said the creation of the new Health Emergencies Program was “one of the most profound transformations in the organization’s history.” Emergency response chief Dr Bruce

Aylward says the changes aim to move WHO away from being a technical and “risk-averse” agency toward one with a “no-regrets approach” that would favor possibly over-deploying in emergencies and then “peel back as necessary,” over not doing enough.

Aylward said “forward-deployed” teams would monitor the vulnerability areas to big health risks, and WHO would seek to avoid instances where “seniority gets in the way of the best technical advice” by assigning incident managers to oversee response.

Changes

He acknowledged the changes would require a “cultural adjustment” at WHO, and said some aspects were already being tried out in the Zika response today in Latin America.

The agency has often been too slow in responding to health crises, and “Ebola really brought it to a head,” Aylward said by phone.

WHO was faulted for broad mismanagement that hamstrung the world’s response to Ebola, which has killed more than 11,300 people, mostly in West Africa.

It resisted sounding the alarm on the outbreak for two months on political, religious and economic grounds and failed to put together a decisive response even after the alert was issued.

“You had great technical people on the ground” in the Ebola response, Aylward said.

“But the reality is that they spent lot of time finding accommodation or finding gas — not finding virus ... We couldn’t scale to the magnitude of the problem.”

Assembly delegates agreed to put $494 million in the program for 20162017, an increase of nearly 50 percent from prior emergency funding levels.

Aylward expressed hopes to double WHO’s emergency response capacity from about 500 people today over the next 18 months.