Critical Illness - The Facts

Everyone in the UK has a high chance of suffering a serious illness before the age of 65.

Cancer:

• Over 245,000 new cases (excluding non-melanoma skin cancer) were registered in the UK in 2004. Translated into individual risk, this means that four out of ten people are at risk of developing cancer during their lifetimes.
• Cancer is the cause of a quarter of deaths.
• More than one-third of us will suffer from cancer during our lifetime.
• There are over 200 different types of cancer, but just four of them - lung, breast, large bowel (colorectal) and prostate - account for half of all new cases.

Female incidence and survival rates - latest figures:

Type	Recorded Cases	5 year survival rate
Breast	33,040	66%
Cervix	27,280	61%
Skin	21,453	82%
Colorectal	15,360	39%
Lung	14,490	5%
Colon	10,640	36%
Ovary	5,910	28%

Male incidence and survival rates - latest figures:

Type	Recorded Cases	5 year survival rate
Lung	25,770	5%
Skin	22,429	68%
Prostrate	18,690	41%
Bladder	15,870	36%
Stomach	6,130	9%
Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma	4,520	41%

Heart Disease:

More than 300,000 Britons suffer heart attacks each year. In the West, one person in 500 has the misfortune to inherit the predisposition to extremely high blood cholesterol levels; and these people are 20 to 30 times more likely to develop heart disease at an early age than the average person.

(Source: British Heart Foundation http://www.bhf.org.uk/)

Kidney Failure:

Each year an additional 80 people per million will need dialysis.

About 23,000 kidney patients currently receive treatment in the UK.

During 2005, 1,740 transplant operations were performed nationally, and another 4,700 people were waiting for a transplant.

The cost of a kidney transplant is between £10,000 and £15,000, with subsequent medication costing an average £3,000 per year.

(Source: The National Kidney Research Fund http://www.nkrf.org.uk)

Major Organ Transplant:

Currently there are 5,523 people waiting for an organ transplant. By May this year, 1,065 had already received transplants.

(Source: UK Transplant Support Service Authority www.uktransplant.org.uk)

Parkinson’s Disease

Over 120,000 people in the UK have Parkinson’s. Most are diagnosed after the age of 60, but 1 in 20 is under 40 and 1 in 7 is under 50.

(Source: Parkinson’s Disease Society)

Stroke:

Every year approximately 100,000 people will suffer a stroke - one every 5 minutes.

(Source: The Stroke Association - www.stroke.org.uk)

Total Disability:

2,014,000 adults are registered to claim disability living allowance.

(Source: Social Security, April 1999)

Life Expectancy:

The average life expectancy in 1901 was 46 for a man and 49 for a woman. In 1997 this had increased to 74.6 for a man and 79.6 for a woman.

(Source: Social trends Data set: www.statistics.gov.uk)