Finding Hope on World Cancer Day

Between its associated pink ribbons and races for the cure, for years, cancer has been seen as a disease particular to the industrialized world. These days, though, the reach of cancer is shifting, and expanding with alarming speed into Asia, Africa and Latin America. Fortunately, there's still some cause for optimism.

Let's start with the bad. Currently, over half of all new cancer cases — as well as fully 60% of cancer-related deaths — occur in developing countries. The World Health Organization notes that cancer kills more people in the developing world than even AIDS, tuberculosis or malaria. As a disease, in much of the world, cancer remains largely "undereported, undiagnosed and untreated," says David Kerr, co-founder of AfrOx, which works with African countries to implement cancer control programs.

Not bleak enough for you yet? Cancer is already the leading cause of death worldwide, and the number of deaths it causes is projected to rise 45% by 2030, partly because of the growing and aging population. Experts say that by 2020, the cancer death rate in low- and middle-income countries will vault to five times that of the industrialized world.

Those are some terrifying metrics. But what if you knew that someone had already invented a drug that was proven to cure 40% of all cancers?

Because that's effectively what we have already, says David Hill, who heads the International Union Against Cancer (UICC). According to UICC and the WHO, out of the 12.4 million cancers diagnosed and 7.6 million cancer deaths worldwide, fully 40% are preventable.

There's a certain fatalism that people tend to attach to cancer. Today, though, UICC is making World Cancer Day by fighting that attitude, in a new campaign called "Cancer can be prevented too." Sure, in the U.S., most kids have it drilled into their heads from an early age that smoking can cause cancer. But that's not all. Poor diet carries a serious risk, too, as do heavy alcohol intake, exposure to the sun and infections. (Both cervical and liver cancer are caused by infections, and can be prevented by vaccines.)

Right now, women in developing countries make up fully 80% of cervical cancer cases. What's the good news? These are cases that, if diagnosed early, can be treated. In the U.S., for example, the five-year survival rate for women who get treated early for cervical cancer is 92%. Likewise with breast cancer, the second-leading cause of cancer death in the developing world. Here in the U.S., fully 81% of women with breast cancer are still alive five years after diagnosis.

Treatment and prevention: not the most magical-sounding couplet, and they won't grab as many headlines as a cure for cancer. But if they can save 40% of people whose lives are stalked by the disease, their possibilities are nearly as revolutionary.

Photo Credit: SuperFantastic