According to a recent report by the Welsh Cancer Intelligence and Surveillance Unit (WCISU) at Public Health Wales, there has been a slowdown in the long-term increases in cancer survival in Wales.
The report indicates that despite an ongoing overall increase in cancer survival, the improvement trend has witnessed a slight deceleration. The five-year cancer survival in the most deprived Welsh communities is only three-quarters of that in the least deprived communities, and recent improvement in inequality remains limited.
Wales and other countries in the UK have historically witnessed lower cancer survival than other western countries. However, recent estimates show that there were no substantial differences between Wales and England for most cancer types, except for leukaemia, one-year survival in lung cancer and five-year survival in prostate and stomach cancers.
The slowdown in cancer survival improvements may be partly attributable to a broader slowdown in the expected life expectancy gains in Wales this decade. Dr Dyfed Wyn Huws, Director of WCISU said: "This trend in life-expectancy is not unique, and has been observed across much of the Western World since around 2011, although it has been particularly marked in the UK and USA."
