By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, DEC 15, 2013: AS per WHO, more women are being diagnosed with and dying from breast cancer. The UN Agency has called for greater attention to prevention and control measures to offset lifestyle changes which pushed breast cancer to be the leading cause of cancer death among women.

Global cancer rates jumped to more than 14 million last year, with some 1.7 million women diagnosed with breast cancer last, an increase of 20 per cent since 2008, according to the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), while the mortality rate rose 14 per cent over that time period with 522,000 deaths in 2012.

“A shift in lifestyles is causing an increase in incidence, and partly because clinical advances to combat the disease are not reaching women living in these regions,” David Forman, Head of the IARC Section of Cancer Information, the group that compiles the global cancer data, said explaining why the disease is also affecting women in less developed countries.

A shift towards lifestyles typical of industrialized countries “leads to a rising burden of cancers associated with reproductive, dietary, and hormonal risk factors,” according to the IARC.

Incidence rates remain highest in more developed regions, but mortality is relatively higher in developing countries due to a lack of early detection and access to treatment facilities.

That trend extends to all types of cancer, with nearly 57 per cent of instances and 65 per cent of deaths last year reported in less developing countries, a tendency expected to further increase by 2025.

In addition, cervical cancer is the fourth most common type of cancer affecting women, after breast, colorectal and lung cancer, particularly in areas with lower levels of development which lack access to effective screening and where the HPV vaccine and other services are not available.

Overall, an estimated 14.1 million people developed cancer last year and 8.2 million died of cancer-related reasons, according to the IARC’s new online database, GLOBOCAN 2012. Those figures are compared with 12.7 million new instances in 2008, and 7.6 million deadly cases.

Reviewing information for 28 types of cancer in 184 countries, IARC found that the most commonly diagnosed cancers worldwide in men and women combined were lung, breast and colorectal cancers. The most common causes of cancer death were lung, liver and stomach cancers.

Indian scenario

Meanwhile, the Indian Health Minister while replying to questions in the Lok Sabha, has said that according to ICMR, the number of various types of cancer mainly breast cancer among women have increased over the past few years. For cervical cancer, the data shows slight increase in absolute numbers which is due to increased population, however, trends over time in Age Adjusted incidence rates (AARs-Five Year Trend) shows a decline.

In females, the cancers of breast, gall bladder, lung, corpus uteri, ovary, thyroid, brain, non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma and myeloid leukemia have shown a statistically significant increase in Age Adjusted incidence rates (AARs).

The increase in the number of cancer cases among women may be attributed to, inter alia, family history of cancer, ageing population, use of tobacco and tobacco products, unhealthy life-style including unhealthy diet, improved diagnostic tools etc.

Under National Programme for Prevention and Control of Cancer, Diabetes, Cardiovascular Diseases and Stroke (NPCDCS), the focus is on three sites namely breast, cervical and oral cancer. Breast Self- Examination (BSE) and Clinical Breast Examination (CBE) for breast cancer, Visual Inspection with Acetic Acid (VIA) technique (also commonly/popularly known as vinegar test) for cervical cancer and self- examination for oral cavity/examination by trained health professionals for oral cancer are envisaged for screening of these cancers.

Prevalent methods for diagnosing cancer include Fine Needle Aspiration cytology (FNAC), X-rays, Ultrasound, CT scan, MRI, biochemical tests, tumour markers besides his to pathological confirmation by biopsy.