The war on cancer is an expensive endeavour.Approximately 10 million people worldwide suffer from neoplasms, with projections of an increase to 15 Mio people by the year 2020.The associated economic burden may well be in the range of Euro 250-350 bn.It is estimated that cancer care accounts for approximately 5% of total healtheare expenditure.Currently, no society can afford all of the potential cancer treatments for all the patients that could benefit from them.How the required resources should and can be provided is one of the great ongoing debates and different countries approach this problem in different ways.Many of these options are new diagnostic tools and more effective treatments.Obviously these innovations, paired with an increasing patient pool, are leading to tremendous absolute health care costs, well surpassing current budgets.Hence, the question arises of how many resources should be devoted to the cancer management, given that resources are scarce and many other medical fields and specialities, with similar clinical advances are competing for these very same resources.To address this issue, it is important to know how many resources are allocated to oncological care and how efficient this care is provided.