Scientific advances in cancer care are improving quality of life for people living with cancer and their survival rates. However, too many people across Asia have been denied access to the benefits of these improvements due to insufficient funding of cancer services. This is a key factor that has led to variations in access to care and insufficient coverage for those who do receive it.

Although Asian countries differ considerably in their economic development and health coverage, the growing cancer burden is a common challenge facing them all. Asia is home to approximately half of the world’s new cases of cancer and cancer related deaths; every day over 17,500 people will be diagnosed with cancer across the region, a number set to rise to nearly 25,000 by 2025. The purpose of this report is to ensure that these innovative funding examples are identified, analyzed, and – where appropriate – emulated and scaled up so that more patients can benefit.

In order to map and understand how countries are seeking to strengthen health financing systems for cancer, the research team behind the report undertook a landscape study of funding mechanisms in eight countries in Asia (China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam and Hong Kong).

In total, the authors examined 208 funding mechanisms and identified the major funding models and their impact on funding, access, and coverage of cancer services. Among these mechanisms, the authors identified forty innovative approaches that either enhanced existing arrangements or adopted a new approach to reduce gaps in the amount of funding, access to funding, and coverage of cancer treatment and care.