The Hepatitis Australia analysis shows that liver cancer has a death-to-incidence ratio of almost one, meaning for every Australian diagnosed with liver cancer another loses their life to the disease.

Other cancers have lower death-to-incidence ratios, indicating people diagnosed with those cancers survive longer on average.

There are 0.2 deaths from breast cancer for every diagnosis in Australia. For prostate cancer, the ratio is 0.16, for melanoma it is 0.13, for bowel cancer  0.26 and for lung cancer 0.77.

While survival rates for many cancers have improved over the past two decades, there has been no improvement in liver cancer prognosis.

Liver cancer is the fastest-growing cause of cancer death in Australia. More than 1400 Australians die from liver cancer each year and a third of those diagnosed die within a month of diagnosis.

Untreated viral hepatitis is the leading cause of liver cancer in Australia.

Hepatitis Australia acting chief executive Kevin Marriott said the nation urgently needed greater investment in programs to prevent hepatitis, such as community education, needle and syringe programs and hepatitis B vaccination, as well as improved diagnosis and treatment.

"The current situation is like running water into a bath with no plug. New patients are pouring in at the same rate lives are being lost. The only change is that the water flow is getting stronger each year," he said.

"This is appalling when we know that the prevention and treatment of viral hepatitis could prevent liver cancer and save many lives."

Only 1 per cent of the 233,000 Australians living with hepatitis C are treated each year with existing treatments, which require injections and carry severe side effects.

The Pharmaceutical Benefits Advisory Committee, the independent expert body that recommends which medicines receive subsidies, will consider applications next month for four new hepatitis treatments.

One of these, Sovaldi, was rejected for listing by the committee at its July meeting on the grounds that it was insufficiently cost-effective compared with existing treatments, and the budget impact of listing the drug on the PBS was "high and likely underestimated".

The health department has revealed that the total cost of listing the drug at the price asked by its maker, Gilead Sciences, was more than $1 billion over five years.