PATIENTS suffering from some forms of cancer can expect to live with the disease for years in the same way as they do with illnesses such as diabetes, says the government’s cancer czar.

For the first time, the government’s cancer strategy, published this week, will focus on “survivorship” – a term imported from America, referring to living with cancer.

The proportion of Britons still alive 10 years after diagnosis has risen from 24% in the 1970s to 46% now, largely because of improved screening and more effective medicines.

Britain still lags behind most western countries on survival rates, but Mike Richards, national cancer director at the Department of Health, believes the gap is closing and a rethink is needed on how the NHS helps survivors. The new strategy will include ways to help patients live with cancer, such as counselling, advice on how to get back to work and regular health checks to spot a recurrence.

“Survival rates are improving and more people are being cured,” Richards said. “Some of them will be able to return to a normal life. Others will be left with the after-effects. In a third group, where patients are receiving modern treatments, the cancer is effectively becoming a chronic condition.”

The government will announce measures to stop people developing cancer in the first place. They include a crackdown on the use of sunbeds, to reduce the incidence of skin cancer, which affects about 75,000 people every year in Britain. Ministers are considering banning their use for under18s. And they plan to stop or restrict the sale of cigarettes from vending machines, to curb lung cancer, which affects 38,000 people every year.

Cancer survival rates have improved markedly over the past decade. About 78% of women diagnosed with breast cancer are now alive after five years, and 52% diagnosed with bowel cancer are still living after the same period.

However, the latest statistics, from 2000 to 2002, show that cancer survival rates in Britain still lag behind those in Europe and America. Only 8% of patients with lung cancer are alive after five years, compared with 16% of patients in Belgium and 15% of patients in Germany. Similarly, only 17% of stomach cancer patients are alive after five years, compared with 33% in Belgium and 31% in Germany.

Richards is hopeful that more recent figures will show we are closing the gap. “Good progress has been made over the past 10 years,” he said. “The death rate is falling 2% every year in people under 75. Survival rates are improving, but much more needs to be done.”

Breast cancer survival five years after diagnosis is now about 90% in America, a jump from 74% in 1979. Bowel cancer survival five years after diagnosis is now 66% in America, compared with 52% in 1979.

Macmillan Cancer Support, a cancer charity, said: “Increasing numbers of people are dealing with cancer and its consequences – physical, psychological, social, spiritual and financial – for the rest of their lives.”

Patients with a common type of blood cancer, chronic myeloid leukaemia, can keep the cancer under control by taking a drug called Glivec every day.

Trials have shown that 90% of sufferers who take the drug are well after five years. Before the drug was developed, the blood cancer would become advanced within four years, giving little hope of survival.

Joanne Lees, 33, from Alsager, Staffordshire, was first diagnosed with breast cancer when she was 26. She had her left breast removed. In August 2004, the cancer returned to her right breast and Lees had a second mastectomy.

Lees was pregnant with her son, Nathan, now 3, at the time and he had to be delivered 10 weeks early so that she could undergo chemotherapy and radiotherapy.

Lees was told that the likelihood of the cancer returning was 81%. But one of the new cancer wonder drugs, Herceptin, has given her greater hope. Clinical trials have shown that the drug can reduce the chances of the cancer coming back in some patients. Lees took Herceptin for a year, at a cost of about £20,000, to prevent the disease from returning. She is also taking another drug, tamoxifen, to keep the cancer at bay.

“I am back working almost full-time now,” said Lees. “Life has returned almost to normal, but the fear of the cancer coming back is always at the back of my mind.”

Professor Karol Sikora, medical director of CancerPartnersUK, a private cancer company, says that as more effective cancer drugs are developed, more people are living with the disease.

Sikora said: “Remarkable recent advances have been made in our ability to treat cancer with both radiotherapy and drugs. We have also seen a greatly increased basic understanding of the abnormalities that cause cancer, driven by an explosion of genomic knowledge. This will lead to the creation of more effective and less toxic therapies given for longer periods of time.

“Currently there are 1.2m people living with cancer in Britain. This will soar to 3.3m by 2020 because of better treatments.”

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