[C1286]Critical Illness Life Assurance

Critical illness insurance has become a popular form of insurance nowadays in the UK. The reason behind is that there may have been a considerable increase in critical illness among people in the UK. As a result, more and more people seek a critical illness policy so as to protect themselves and their families from possible uncertainties in the future.

Consequently, critical illness insurance has given rise to competitiveness over the insurance market as new insurance companies start to appear. Hence, low price based critical illness policies could now be available easily. But the situation is of concern as the rates of people suffering from any sort of critical illness may tend to rise.

Here are some facts and statistics about some critical illnesses during the past few years.

Multiple Sclerosis
According to Multiple Sclerosis Society, 2002, there may approximately be 85,000 people suffering from this critical illness in the UK. In addition, results demonstrate that each year about 2,500 new cases of multiple sclerosis are diagnosed. Moreover, it is unfortunate to find out that multiple sclerosis may be the most common neurological disorder among young adults. This critical illness may be diagnosed in people usually between the ages of 20 to 40.

Cancer
According to the Breast Cancer Campaign 2002, it can be said that 1 of every 9 women may contract a critical illness such as breast cancer at some point in her life. Furthermore, in 1997, 38,000 women may have been diagnosed with this life threatening critical illness. Additional surveys suggest that this rate may increase every year. Fortunately, medical improvements has made it possible for more than 60 percent of women to probably stay alive 5 years later after contracting this critical illness.

The Office of National Statistics states that in the year 2000, about 150,000 people may have died from cancer. More precisely speaking, every 3 and a half minutes one person die making cancer one of the most lethal critical illness in the UK. In the year 2000 once again, around 20,600 men and 13,000 women may have died from lung cancer than any other type of cancer.

Kidney failure
As per the UK Renal Registry 1998, at the end of the year 1998, around 31,000 people have been likely to suffer from an end-stage renal failure critical illness. As a matter of fact, about half of the patients could have undergone a transplant surgery while the remaining may have been treated with dialysis.

Deafness
According to RNID 2002, in total, around 8 million people may be deaf or hard of hearing. This result shows one highly elevated form of critical illness. Out of these, 673,000 people could be severely or profoundly deaf relying on lip-reading and requiring a text phone or video phone to communicate.

Critical illness insurance consists also of exclusions in its policy. One common form of exclusion which may be found on almost every critical illness policy is HIV/AIDS. So let’s see some facts about this disease.

HIV/AIDS
According to Terrence Higgins Trust 2002, during the year 2001, around 48,000 people had been diagnosed HIV positive. Furthermore in this same year, about 12,000 people may have died of AIDS. It is an encouraging fact to see that the number of people dying from AIDS is decreasing due to extensive introduction of ‘combination therapy’ in 1996. On the other hand, the number of people living with HIV could have most likely increased by 47% between the year 2000 and 2005.

Critical illness is a matter of concern. The figures seen above reveal that many people are affected by many sorts of critical illnesses. So, if you are not yet insured, it can be considered as a wise idea to get yourself a critical illness cover.

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