GLOBAL cancer rates are expected to rise by 50 per cent to about 15 million new cases in 2020 and developing nations are especially at risk, says a report released recently by the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Countries of the south could be especially hard hit unless they begin implementing strong prevention strategies targeted primarily at discouraging tobacco use and encouraging healthy diets, according to the 351-page World Cancer Report by WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
“The World Cancer Report tells us that cancer rates are set to increase at an alarming rate globally, but we can make a difference by acting today,’’ said Paul Kleihues, the IARC’s director and co-editor of the report.
“This reports calls on governments, health practitioners and the general public to take urgent action. Action now can prevent one third of cancers, cure another third and provide good, palliative care to the remaining third who need it,’’ he said from IARC’s headquarters in Lyon, France.
The most important change required is to reduce smoking and tobacco use, the report says. Lung cancer is the most common cancer world-wide, accounting for 1.2 million cases every year and responsible for almost 20 per cent of cancer’s annual global death toll of more than six million. Roughly 90 per cent of lung cancers in both men and women are attributable to smoking in countries where the practice is popular with both genders.
The risk of contracting lung cancer is 20 to 30 times greater for smokers than for non-smokers, but tobacco consumption is believed to threaten more than the lungs. More than 50 per cent of cases of bladder and renal pelvis cancer are believed to be caused by smoking, while the practice appears related in varying degrees to cancers of the oral cavity, pharynx and larynx and even of the digestive tract, according to the report.
The WHO’s proposed Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), which is to be submitted for approval to the World Health Assembly (WHA), urges countries to ban all tobacco advertising and increase taxes on sales of tobacco, requires at least 30 per cent of a tobacco product’s package to be devoted to health warnings, and calls for all States to enforce bans on the sale of tobacco to minors. IPS
include the United States, Italy, Australia, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada and France. Developing countries with the lowest cancer rates were found in northern Africa and South and East Asia.
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