First Global Economic Cost of Cancer Report released by American Cancer Society and LIVESTRONG®
Also reported on the Global Fight Against Cancer Blog, “American Cancer Society and LIVESTRONG® Release First-of-its-kind Study ‘Global Economic Cost of Cancer’”
This was also reported on by the Associated Press, “Report: Cancer is the world’s costliest disease.” Costs, not including direct medical costs, are estimated at $895 billion.
LIVESTRONG® also sponsored a report by The Economist Intelligence Unit, which presents the results of research and analysis on the health
and economic burden of cancer, global expenditures for cancer control and the funding gap relating to achieving a global expenditure standard for treatment and care. (It’s not clear what the relationship between these two reports is.)
The Economist/LIVESTRONG® report on the global burden of cancer
Full report: “Breakaway: The global burden of cancer—challenges and opportunities” (PDF, 73 pp.)
The primary collaborators on this project were Nancy Beaulieu and David E. Bloom of the Harvard School of Public Health, Lakshmi Reddy Bloom of Data For Decisions LLC and Richard M. Stein of the Economist Intelligence Unit.
The American Cancer Society reports that in 2009 the National Institutes of Health estimated the total cost of cancer as $228.1 billion. That included direct medical costs and indirect costs due to loss of productivity due to illness and premature death.
The recent global report did not include direct medical costs.
Other resources
World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC)
I Wish I Were Far From the Madding Crowd 