Progress in cancer survival, but is uneven across the country

AFP

Tuesday, 30 January, 2018 19:04

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Tuesday, 30 January, 2018 19:04

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The proportion of cancer patients who survive is progressing in the world, but in a very unequal manner, depending on the country, according to a published Wednesday in the journal Lancet.

The study covers 37.5 million people in 71 countries, representing two-thirds of the population of the planet, and on 18 types of cancer are among the most common.

For example, in the case of a brain tumor in a child, “the five-year survival is two times higher in Denmark and Sweden (about 80%) than in Mexico and Brazil (less than 40%)”, noted the authors.

Acute lymphoblastic leukemia, the most common cancer in childhood, killing more than 40% of affected children in China, Mexico, or Ecuador, but less than 10% in the United States, in Canada and in nine countries in Western Europe.

The countries dealing with the best might therefore serve as examples to lower, among other things, the balance of 100 000 children are victims each year in the world.

For example, the South-East Asia, Japan and South Korea are leading-edge against cancers of the stomach, which appears to be due to “program of endoscopic examinations in certain populations for a long time”. Among the countries that would have interest to consider this model, Russia, “where the gastrointestinal cancers are a major public health problem”.

Conversely, the South-East Asia is lagging behind melanoma, “which may reflect a lower awareness of public opinion and a higher prevalence of a sub-type of death (acral melanoma lentigineux)”, according to the researchers.

They have deplored the fact that the data are very incomplete.

“Knowing the billions of dollars invested in research each year, the fact that a universal need for all countries (an analysis of the statistics of cancer from national or regional registers, editor’s note) is not satisfied means a policy of short-term and misplaced priorities,” said the oncologist, uk Richard Sullivan.