Critical Illness Cover

CRITICAL ILLNESS INSURANCE

Statistics from the Chest Heart Stroke Association (1998) reveal that every two minutes a heart attack strikes someone somewhere in the UK. Yet despite these statistics, a surprising 93% of the working population don't have any form of serious illness protection. (Source Swiss Re: Healthwatch 1998).
In fact 1 in 3 men aged 30 will have a stroke, cancer or heart attack before the age of 65, and the same fate will happen to 1 in 5 women of the same age. (Source: ERC Frankona 1998).

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in England and Wales. In 2000 there were almost 36,000 new cases diagnosed, 30 per cent of all cancers in women and a rate of 114 per 100,000 women.
Around 11,500 women died from breast cancer in England and Wales in 2002, a rate of 30 per 100,000 women. It is the most common cause of cancer death in women.

One in nine women will develop breast cancer at some point in their lives. Most of the known risk factors for breast cancer relate to a woman's reproductive history such as early first period, late first pregnancy, low parity and late menopause. Oral contraceptive use, hormone replacement therapy (HRT), obesity and increased alcohol consumption also increase the risk.

Four in five new cases are diagnosed in women over the age of 50, with the peak in the distribution of new cases in the 50 to 54 age group. This peak is largely a result of the breast screening programme because many of these women will have been screened for the first time.
Source: Office for National Statistics

Circulatory diseases (which include heart disease and stroke) have remained the most common cause of death in England and Wales over the last 90 years among both males and females, with the exception of 1918 to 1919.

Male death rates from circulatory disease are higher than those for females: 312 per 100,000 males and 194 per 100,000 females in 2002. Within these, death rates from heart disease were higher than stroke among both males and females.

Cancers are now the second most common cause of death among males and females. Female cancer mortality rates decreased during the 1940s and 1950s, then rose to a peak in the late 1980s, declining again during the 1990s. Among males the pattern was different. Rates increased substantially to the late 1970s and then declined more rapidly from the 1990s.


Mortality rates by cause of death vary with age and sex. In 2002, for young people aged 15 to 29, mortality rates were highest for injury and poisoning (41 per 100,000 population for men and 10 per 100,000 for women).

In adults aged 30 to 44, the major cause of death differed for men and women. Injury and poisoning was the leading cause of death for men (45 per 100,000 population) and cancers the leading cause of death for women (32 per 100,000 population).

For those aged 45 to 64, cancers were the leading cause of death among both men and women, with mortality rates of 245 per 100,000 for men and 218 per 100,000 for women. Injury mortality rates among men aged 45 to 64 were lower than for those aged 15 to 29 and 30 to 44.

In older people aged 65 to 84, circulatory diseases were the leading cause of death, for both men and women, although rates for all the causes shown in the table were higher than those at younger ages. The highest mortality rates were in people aged 85 and over, with circulatory diseases having the highest rates followed by respiratory diseases and cancers.
Source: Office for National Statistics

The probability that you will suffer a serious illness that means you will be off work for six months or more during your working life is - 1 in 16.
(Scottish Provident/MORI research 2003)

British Heart Foundation figures, for example, show that less than half of the 262,000 heart attacks suffered in the UK each year actually kill their victims. The remaining heart attack victims each year live on, but may find themselves with sharply reduced earning power or needing much more help at home. It is this need that Critical Illness cover aims to cover.

According to the Imperial Cancer Research Fund found in 1999, 1 in 3 people in Britain will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their life.