Ethnicity and childhood cancer survival

We need high quality data to analyse outcomes Evidence suggests ethnic inequalities in cancer outcomes among children in the UK. A study of children with cancer between 1981 and 1996 showed no significant difference in survival overall when comparing white and non-white children but found higher mortality for children of South Asian origin with acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and for black children with neuroblastoma compared with white children.1 A historical regional study of patients under 30 with cancer between 1990 and 2005 concluded poorer survival outcomes for South Asians compared with non-South Asian children and young adults with leukaemia and lymphoma but better outcomes for South Asian children and young adults with other solid tumours, independent of socioeconomic deprivation.2 A study from Yorkshire examining survival from 1997 to 2016 revealed long term improvement in survival rates for all cancers combined, including in children from South Asian background, whose five year survival for all cancers rose from 64.4% to 80.7%.3 Although the survival gap between South Asians and other ethnic groups for leukaemia and solid tumours outside the central nervous system (CNS) narrowed, persistent …