South Wiltshire urged to engage with Cancer screening programmes
It's in a bid to catch the disease earlier - and reduce treatment costs
One of the south's top cancer doctors has joined the calls for improvements in early diagnosis and capture of the disease in a bid to reduce treatment costs.
It follows a new report warns that more than a quarter of premature deaths in the UK between now and 2050 will be due to cancer.
The study from the OECD warns the "current trajectory" of costs for the disease is "unsustainable".
It wants greater investment in early screening, diagnosis and treatment of the illness, claiming the total annual workforce output in the UK is 6-point-5 billion pounds lower than if there was no cancer.
Dr Richard Roope, from Wessex Cancer Alliance, told Greatest Hits Radio we're facing a perfect storm as life expectancy increases.
"That's good thing," he says, but added: "The biggest risk factor for cancer is actually advancing age.
"We've developed more and more amazing treatments, some of which are needed to be taken for a long time and it's a real challenge.
"One of the biggest things we have to look at is prevention. About 40% of all cancers could be prevented by us changing our behaviours and the next step along is we need to get better at catching cancers earlier and get a high proportion of course earlier," Dr Roope said.
He's urging more of the public to engage with screening programmes.
Dr Roope said: "Screening is a really good way of finding some cancers before they've even become cancer, which sounds a bit of a tautology, but you can find the changes before something's actually developed into a cancer, but also the cancers you do find a much higher proportion of an early stage, which means there are many more treatment options and the outlooks, a whole lot rosier."
As people live longer, less people are dying prematurely, which in UK is defined as under the age of 75, more people are at risk of cancer due to old age.
But this is supplemented by improvements in in cardiovascular health.
Dr Roope told us: "What's really changed is in the cardiovascular field, so in heart disease and stroke, where we have dramatically reduced the numbers of people dying prematurely.
"It's a rather strange concept, but that then allows people to live long enough to develop a cancer. Or as we're now seeing, surviving their first cancer and developing a second cancer."