People diagnosed with common types of cancer in the UK are now twice as likely to survive their disease for at least a decade than those diagnosed in the 1970s. This is thanks to multiple advances in cancer prevention, diagnosis and treatment, which have helped avoid more than 1 million cancer deaths in the UK since the mid-1980s.
Cancer Research UK has played a major role in these achievements, thereby giving patients precious extra time to live their lives and be with their loved ones. Research funded by the charity, for example, led to the development of radiotherapy, benefiting more than 130,000 patients annually in the UK, and of the HPV vaccine, which is predicted to reduce cervical cancer rates in the UK by almost 90%. It also helped prove the link between tobacco and cancer, and played a role in developing around half of the world’s essential cancer drugs.
