PRESS CONFERENCE ON GLOBALIZATION OF CANCER

 

With the global cancer burden shifting away from the high-resource countries, it was estimated that the number of cases diagnosed each year would more than double by 2030, with the vast majority of that increase occurring in medium- and low-resource countries, Peter Boyle, Director of the International Agency for Research on Cancer, said at Headquarters today.

Speaking during a press conference on the globalization of cancer, he said the three main reasons for that trend were population growth, ageing populations and the successful exportation of cancer-risk factors from high-resource countries, which added on to those already found in the low-resource world.  A large proportion of the new cases could be preventable, and it was important to seek ways to prevent those cancers that could be prevented, while making adequate treatment facilities available for those cases requiring treatment.

He expressed surprise that the United Nations, so dedicated to people’s health and well-being, allowed smoking in the Secretariat building, when the habit’s effects would result in a billion deaths this century.

The International Agency for Research in Cancer was established in Lyon, France, under a 1965 World Health Assembly resolution.  With 300 employees, it is the global headquarters for world cancer research.

Asked what the Agency could do to ensure that the United Nations was as involved in fighting cancer as in combating HIV/AIDS, Dr. Boyle said it was starting to raise awareness of the disease among a much larger audience.  The Agency had previously concentrated on cancer in high-resource countries, without looking very closely at what was going on in low-resource countries, essentially until the advent of AIDS.  With much better data available over the last three or four years, it was now possible to make better assessments of the chronic disease situation in those countries.

He said a recent study had made the surprising revelation that breast cancer was the most lethal or the second most lethal form of the disease in each of the five World Health Organization (WHO) regions.  Another surprise was that the most common type of cancer afflicting men in Africa was Kaposi’s sarcoma, which was directly linked to the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The world community should be more active in fighting cancer, he continued.  While radiotherapy was the mainstay of cancer therapy in the West -- with half of the patients getting one course and a quarter receiving two courses -- a total of 30 countries lacked even a single radiotherapy machine among them, while Africa could cope with only one fifth of its entire needs.

He went on to say that much work remained to be done at the global level, rather than leaving it to individual countries.  The international community and the United Nations should be increasingly aware of the problems in the delivery of cancer prevention and care to many parts of the world.

Asked by another correspondent whether the money for expensive radiotherapy in countries with limited resources could not probably save many more lives if directed towards malaria or AIDS, he said the previously mentioned study revealed also that cancer currently killed more people than tuberculosis, AIDS and malaria combined.  While spending on health was a political decision at the national level, the important thing was to raise awareness among Governments and other entities so they could respond.  It was important to increase activity and spending on cancer, but not necessarily at the expense of HIV/AIDS or malaria.

Responding to another question, he said tobacco was the best-identified factor linking cancer, stroke and heart attack.  It caused one third of cancer deaths in such countries as the United States and those of Western Europe, and increased dramatically the risk of stroke and cardiovascular disease.

Regarding prostate cancer, he said that, previously, the highest incidence and mortality rates had been found in the Caribbean and Africa and, while it remained very high in those regions, it was now much higher in the United States and Western Europe.

With respect to problems relating to the distribution of expensive medications around the world, he agreed with another correspondent that there was no reason for leukaemia injections in Western Europe, for example, to cost twice as much as they did in the United States, when the vaccine was made in the same place and in the same way.  A second problem was how to deliver effective vaccination strategies for cervical cancer, which mainly affected low-resource countries, at a price they could afford.  That question could be tackled only at the highest level.

Asked about possible links between genetically modified foods and cancer, he said that, so far, from all the studies combined, there was no evidence of an increased risk of cancer from genetically modified foods.

With respect to the exportation of cancer-risk factors, he told another journalist that the main causes of cancer in the United States or Western Europe currently included tobacco smoking, increased obesity, reduced physical activity, sudden exposure to sunlight in light-skinned populations and alcohol consumption.  Alcohol consumption had been transferred to the low-resource countries in particular, while the decline in physical activity had been transferred to the medium-resource countries.

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For information media • not an official record