New WHO Cancer Figures

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

Cancer emerges as major killer in developing world

(Release at 0001 GMT May 11) By Elif Kaban

GENEVA, May 11 (Reuters) - Cancer has emerged as a major killer in several
newly industrialised countries and is striking
more people in areas of the developing world where it was hardly known
before, the World Health Organisation said.

Although the risk of cancer will stabilise, if not decline, in
industrialised countries by 2025, developing countries will suffer
from increasing rates of the disease, the WHO said in an extensive report on
the world's state of health.

Cancer caused 12 percent of the 52 million deaths worldwide in 1997 and was
the third leading killer after infectious and
parasitic diseases and coronary and heart diseases, it said.

"Cancer will remain one of the leading causes of death worldwide," United
Nations health experts wrote in the report. Only a
third of all cancer cases can be cured with early detection and effective
treatment.

Lung cancer was the leading cause of deaths from the disease, killing 1.1
million people in 1997, followed by stomach cancer
with 765,000 deaths, colon and rectum cancer with 525,000 deaths, liver
cancer with 505,000 deaths and breast cancer with
385,0000 deaths, the WHO said.

The U.N. doctors estimated that stomach cancer would be less common around
the world in coming years due to improved
food conservation, dietary changes and declining food infections.

Cervical cancer too was expected to decline in the rich world mainly because
of screening, as was liver cancer.

But cases and deaths of lung cancer, more than 90 percent of them caused by
smoking, will increase, the report said. Lung
cancer deaths among women will rise in virtually all industrialised
countries as well as in developing countries, it added.

The WHO said lung cancer among women rose fourfold in rich nations in the
past 30 years and overtaken breast cancer as
the leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States.

But it warned that the developing world was catching up with the rich
nations in terms of lung cancer among women.

"Levels of mortality among older women due to lung cancer are now similar in
developed and developing countries, and are
likely to grow worldwide given the increasing numbers of women who smoke,"
it said.

The WHO says smoking is one of the top three causes of premature deaths in
Asia, where China alone accounts for at least
750,000 deaths each year attributable to tobacco.

Critics have accused the WHO of being timid in the battle against smoking
under the decade-long rule of its Japanese director
general Hiroshi Nakajima, who steps down this year amid Western governments'
charges of corruption and mismanagement.

But this is likely to change under the incoming WHO head Gro Harlem
Brundtland, who vowed last month to open a new
front in the global fight against the damaging effects of smoking.

The former Norwegian prime minister, nominated to be the new head of the
WHO, told Reuters in a recent interview she
would make the anti-tobacco fight a policy priority.

She said her focus in the battle against tobacco would be on the Third
World, where cigarette manufacturers have been trying
to expand markets to make up for reduced consumption in the West where they
often face restrictive legislation and lawsuits.

"There is no choice other than making a difference on tobacco consumption.
It is detrimental to health," she said. Her
nomination will be approved by the WHO assembly on Wednesday.

Big tobacco companies in the United States face dozens of suits filed by
individuals, groups and local governments that charge
that the cigarette manufacturers knew of tobacco's damaging health effects
and must shoulder costs for them.