April 29, 2014
China and India, the world’s biggest population giants, are facing a cancer crisis, with smoking, belated diagnosis and unequal access to treatment all causing large-scale problems. Public awareness of cancer risk remains extremely low, tinged by either fatalism or a misplaced faith in traditional medicine to tackle the disease.
In a major report, published in The Lancet Oncology, more than 40 specialists warn that Asia’s two emerging giants are facing huge economic and human costs from the disease.
In China, cancer now accounts for one in every five deaths, ranking second only to cardiovascular disease as the most common cause of mortality, according to the study.
Sixty percent of cancer cases in China are attributable to “modifiable environmental factors,” including smoking, water contamination and air pollution, it said. The experts recommend that an urgent and ongoing effort should be made to reduce pollution in China’s air, water and soil.
But funding is also an issue. China currently spends only 5.1 percent of its national income on health care — roughly only half the rate of European countries — and just 0.1 percent of this spending goes specifically to cancer. Patients in China also need to pay for most cancer treatment themselves, which can lead to catastrophic health care bills, while urban areas have twice as many cancer care beds than rural areas, even though half of China’s population live in the countryside.
In India, around one million new cancer cases are diagnosed each year, a tally that is projected to reach 1.7 million in 2035. Deaths from cancer are currently 600,000-700,000 annually, although this figure is also forecast to rise, to around 1.2 million.
The study showed that while incidence of cancer in the Indian population is only about a quarter of that in the US or Europe, mortality rates among those diagnosed with the disease are much higher.
Diagnosis is a problem, with a lack of cancer care in the north, centre and east of the country forcing many patients to travel long distances for treatment, and often to live in very harsh conditions. In rural India, more than three quarters of private practitioners, who are often the first personnel to whom people sick with cancer turn to for treatment, have no medical qualifications, the report said.