The Problem
Child Cancer
Successful therapy for childhood cancer leads to a high cost of cure
While the incidence of childhood and adolescent cancer patients is small (1%) compared to adults, the trend is for more child and adolescent cancer patients to survive longer leading to increasing costs for treatment of late effect medical issues from childhood cancers. We are seeing similar trends in Australia as the above USA data.
Any advance in childhood cancer treatments that improve cure rates, therefore has an enormous effect on numbers of years of life saved. Child cancer is only second to breast cancer in terms of numbers of years of life saved with this being a function of age at diagnosis and the projected years number of years lived after diagnosis.
Australian Statistics
In Australia, in 2017, an estimated 1.7 boys (0-4 years old) will die from cancer for every 100,000 boys. The same estimate for girls.
A higher estimate for boys at 1.9 in the 5-9 year age group and 2.0 for girls.
For the 10-14 year old age group, for both boys and girls, the estimate is 1.2 for every 100,000.
Source: Cancer Australia
In 2014, 76 children in the 0-14 years age range died from cancer.