Cancer Treatment Brought in the Most Pharmaceutical Revenue in 2018

A new report released by consultancy Evaluate, which analyses trends in the pharmaceutical sector have revealed that cancer drugs reached 123.8 billion USD (12.38 trillion shillings) in sales in 2018, the highest amount of revenue brought in to the pharmaceutical industry.

According to Evaluate’s report, oncology drugs recorded more than double revenue from sales that of the next item on the list, which was drugs treating diabetes with 48.5 billion USD (4.8 trillion shillings) in sales.

By 2024, cancer drug sales are expected to almost double to 236.6 billion USD (23.6 trillion shillings).

Cancer drugs, and in general treatment, are extremely expensive and therefore generate high revenues, with costs of cancer treatment at above 100,000 USD per patient. Cancer rates have also been recorded to be rising with humans increasing their lifespans.

Money funneled into cancer research means new medications coming out, which improves cancer treatment but might also increase its price as pharmaceutical companies charge a premium for the newly researched and released drugs.

Anti-diabetic drug sales are also expected to increase at a rate of 2.9 percent to reach 57.6 billion USD (5.7 trillion shillings) by the year 2024.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), an estimated 1.6 million deaths were directly linked to diabetes in 2016. Another 425 million adults aged between 20 and 79 years were living with diabetes and the figure expected to rise to 629 million by 2045.

From Evaluate’s report, anti-rheumatic drugs were third in place, generating 58.1 billion USD in revenue while vaccines generated 30.5 billion USD in revenue.

Anti-viral drugs, Immunosuppressants, dermatological prescriptions, and bronchodilators contributed revenues of 38.9, 14.2, 15.8 and 28 billion USD respectively in form of sales.

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