Cancer charities blamed the poor results on deficient radiotherapy services and the fact that people are still waiting too long after discovering a lump or another sign of cancer to see a doctor.

The survey of cancer survival rates of 2.7 million people with cancer across Europe, Eurocare, shows that the gap between the highest survival rates, in the Nordic north and the lowest, mainly in eastern countries including Poland, is narrowing. But those in the UK remain stubbornly low.

The research suggests that if all countries were achieving the survival rates of the most successful Nordic countries, then there would be 12% fewer deaths across Europe - 150,000.

Survival rates for people diagnosed with breast cancer in 2000-02 were 77.8% in England, 77.3% in Scotland and 78.4% in Wales. In Iceland women in the same period had a 93.4% survival rate and in Sweden 86.3%. The Lancet Oncology says: "Overall, survival for all cancers combined in the UK as a whole is not only below the European average, it is also noticeably similar to some eastern European countries that spend less than one third of the UK’s per capita healthcare budget." Addressing the problem would require "fundamental reassessment of the ways in which the NHS operates".

An experimental vaccine appears to be effective against a strain of flu virus that experts fear could spark a devastating pandemic, offering the first evidence that any inoculation could provide a powerful weapon against the deadly microbe, a federal health official said yesterday.

Two doses of the vaccine produced an immune system response potent enough to neutralize the virus in tests on 113 volunteers who were injected as part of a federally sponsored study being conducted at three U.S. universities.

"This is very good news," said Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. "This is the first vaccine that anybody has that has been tested to show that you can actually produce a robust immune response."

Public health authorities are alarmed by a strain of flu virus known as H5N1, which has been spreading primarily in birds across Asia and in Russia. It also has infected more than 100 humans in the past 18 months, killing about half of them. If the virus starts to spread efficiently among humans, experts fear it could trigger a global pandemic that could kill millions.

In response, millions of birds throughout Asia have been slaughtered to try to stem the spread of the virus, governments and the World Health Organization have been stockpiling antiviral drugs, and scientists have been scrambling to produce an effective vaccine.