Disparities between rich, poor nations in cancer drugs availability: Study

New cancer drugs launched each year increased from 0.5 in the 1990s to over eight in 2022 among high-income countries, whereas they increased from 0.1 to 1.5 a year among upper-middle-income countries, according to a global analysis revealing "significant" and "widening" disparities.New drug launches remained minimal in lower-middle-income and low-income countries, it found.Published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Global Health, the analysis highlighted significant disparities in both availability and timeliness of these medicines worldwide, according to researchers.The inequities could explain the poor cancer outcomes across many countries, especially the low- and middle-income ones, where mortality-to-incidence ratios have been studied to be higher, despite overall cases being lower, the researchers, including those from The Pennsylvania State University, US, said.The measure 'mortality-to-incidence ratio' is used to compare inequities in cancer outcomes. It is calculat