Team:Warsaw/Human

Cancer - important social problem

According to many sources cancer remains the main cause of death in both men and women in developped countries. Between 1950 and 1999, death due to cancer arose almost two fold overtaking heart disease, stroke and infectious diseases. For instance cancer currently kill over 100,000 people in Great Britain per year which is more than deaths from heart diseases. The situation in the USA is no better: the death rate from cancer declined by only 5 percent from 1950 to 2005, in contrast with the dropping mortality rates seen for other serious diseases such as stroke.

We now see a dramatic decrease in the number of deaths caused by infectious diseases and heart failures, where as the rates for cancer survival have changed only by little despite of new advances in therapy and treatment.

The emerging patterns in cancer epidemology show that people who live in more deprived areas of the world are more prone to cancer development. However, if the number of deaths from cancer were as low in all social groups as they are in the most affluent ones there would be significantly less deaths caused by cancer every year.

Many scientists are now proposing that a major factor behind the augmenting number of deaths caused by cancer lies in increased human longevity. A number of independent research studies indicate that most of the tumors which contribute to the mortality figures are cancers affecting elderly people. One particular example is the observation that there is a huge increase in the number of women dying from lung cancer in recent years. This type of neoplasm is probably the biggest cause of cancer related deaths amid women exceeding the also rising number of breast cancer cases, which is the second most dreadful killer. With breast cancer, for example, only around 20 percent of patients with metastatic disease — a cancer that has spread outside the breast, live five years or more, a number that has barely changed since the past thirty years.

It is thought that the most efficacious way to tackle cancer related deaths is to educate the public about the risk of the disease. It is believed that more than half of all types of cancer can be prevented by taking simple steps such as switching to a more balanced diet, reducing smoking and alcohol consumption or avoiding intensive exposure to the sun. A large number of deaths is due to the lack of proper education. This leads to the situation in which most of the tumors are diagnosed in their advanced stages when they are more difficult to overcome. At present the situation is most alarming among women, but men are as well failing to seek medical advice soon enough.