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Global cancer rates expected to hit twenty two million fresh cases per year by 2030: WHO
By 2030, the number of people worldwide who are diagnosed with cancer is expected to skyrocket to 21.6 million — a stark fifty three percent increase from the latest stats reported in 2012, the World Health Organization reported.
“The rise of cancer worldwide is a major obstacle to human development and well-being,” Dr. Chris Wild, the director of the WHO’s International Agency for Research on Cancer, said in a press release. “These fresh figures and projections send a strong signal that instantaneous act is needed to confront this human disaster, which touches every community worldwide, without exception.»
The WHO released their annual World Cancer Report on Tuesday — World Cancer Day. The project involved more than two hundred fifty scientists from forty different countries.
In two thousand twelve alone, about fourteen million people were diagnosed with cancer, and 8.Two million people lost their fight to the disease. The current numbers mean that one in five studs and one in six women will eventually get cancer by the time they reach 75. One in eight and one in twelve women will pass away from the disease.
One of the most concerning factors was that fifty seven percent of fresh cancer cases and sixty five percent of deaths came from the developed world. By 2025, the researchers estimate a little less than eighty percent of all cancer deaths would happen in these areas.
The most diagnosed cancers were lung, breast and large bowel cancer. Together they made up almost thirty five percent of all cancers diagnosed in 2012.
The report found that lung, liver, belly, colorectal and breast cancers are responsible for the most cancer-related deaths each year. Lung cancer was responsible for 1.59 million deaths, more than two times the 2nd leading cause of cancer-related death.
The authors estimated that about thirty percent of cancer deaths could be preventable and are linked to five different behavioral activities: high figure mass index, low fruit and vegetable intake, lack of physical activity, tobacco use and alcohol manhandle.
Tobacco consumption alone was the most significant factor for enhancing cancer risk, and was responsible for more than twenty percent of worldwide cancer deaths and seventy percent of lung cancer deaths.
Otis Brawley, chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, told USA Today that the report confirms what many experts have known for all along about preventable cancer.
While in the U.S. and the rest of the developed world cancer death risk has decreased by twenty percent, the overall cancer death rate has enlargened across other parts of the globe, he pointed out. Part of the problem is the U.S. and Western Europe have made a concerted effort to switch modifiable cancer risk-linked behaviors like cigarette smoking and obesity, while the rest of the world hasn`t. In addition, the developed world is passing on these «bad habits» to developing countries.
“The cargo of cancer internationally has doubled over the last twenty years, and it will dual over the next twenty years. These facts support that we need to be serious about cancer prevention activities,» he commented.
Other top cause for cancer included viral infections like hepatitis B, hepatitis C, and the human papillomavirus (HPV). Infections were especially concerning in developing nations, and was behind up to twenty percent of all cancer-related deaths in low to middle-income countries.
The WHO called for the development of National Cancer Control Plans, more awareness towards behavioral-related cancer causes, cancer screening programs and more programs to vaccinate more people against HPV.