Direct Link to Full 4-Page FAO/WHO Document:
http://www.fao.org/3/a-i6130e.pdf
Frequently Asked Questions: http://www.fao.org/3/a-i6137e.pdf
3 February 2017 – Launched ahead of the World Cancer Day (4 February), the new WHO guidance aims to improve the chances of survival for people living with cancer by ensuring that health services can focus on diagnosing and treating the disease earlier. Strategies to improve early diagnosis can be built into health systems at a low cost. In turn, effective early diagnosis can help detect cancer in patients at an earlier stage, enabling treatment that is generally more effective, less complex, and less expensivе.
WHO/Sergey Volkov
The cancer burden continues to grow in the WHO European Region, exerting tremendous physical, emotional and financial strain on individuals, families, communities and health systems. Despite some efforts made in prevention, early detection and treatment, cancer mortality increased by 6.6% between 2000 and 2015 across the Region. However, during the same period, some countries – including Belarus, Czechia, Denmark, Ireland, Israel, Luxembourg, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and the United Kingdom – managed to reduce cancer mortality, illustrating that it is possible. Indeed, mortality rates were reduced by up to 16% in Luxembourg and 11% in Norway and Turkey.
WASHINGTON, January 30, 2017 – A new World Bank policy report urges developing countries and international development agencies to rethink their approach to governance, as a key to overcoming challenges related to security, growth, and equity.
The 2017 World Development Report: Governance and the Law explores how unequal distribution of power in a society interferes with policies’ effectiveness. Power asymmetries help explain, for example, why model anti-corruption laws and agencies often fail to curb corruption, why decentralization does not always improve municipal services; or why well-crafted fiscal policies may not reduce volatility and generate long-term savings.
16/01/2017 - The proliferation of high-cost medicines and rising drug prices are increasing pressures on public health spending and calling into question the pharmaceutical industry’s pricing strategies. Governments need to work with the industry and regulators to define a new approach to the development and use of new health technologies that encourages innovation while also delivering more affordable and value for money treatments, according to a new OECD report.
New Health Technologies: Managing Access, Value and Sustainability says that pharmaceutical spending is increasingly skewed towards high-cost products. The launch prices of drugs for cancer and rare diseases are rising, sometimes without a commensurate increase in health benefits for patients. For instance in the United States, the launch price of oncology drugs per life-year gained has been multiplied by four in less than 20 years - in constant terms - and now exceeds USD 200 000.
Payers, such as insurers or public health providers, are also increasingly struggling to pay for high-cost medicines targeting very small populations, which are expected to proliferate with the development of precision medicine. On the other side of spectrum, new treatments for hepatitis which are very effective and cost-effective in the long-term but target a wide population, are unaffordable to many who would benefit in almost all OECD countries because of their high budget impact.
