Health | Cancer ‘hitting hard’ in Macau, China

Medical staff gathers to write cancer-related messages on one or both of their hands and then take individual or group photos and post them to social media as part of the World Cancer Day Talking Hands social media campaign

A new report cited by the American Cancer Society estimates that there were 4.3 million new cancer cases in China and more than 2.8 million cancer-related deaths in 2015 alone.
The same report indicates that lung cancer is the most common cancer and the leading cause of cancer deaths in all of China.
The data, made available by the National Central Cancer Registry of China, was published in CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians after a long investigation led by Wanqing Chen, PhD, MD, of the National Cancer Center in Beijing. For the study, Chen analyzed data from 72 local, population-based cancer registries between 2009 and 2011, representing 6.5 percent of the total population.
Among the most highlighted report findings are facts such as the prediction of almost 12,000 new cancer diagnoses each day in 2015, as well as the assessment that about 2,814,000 Chinese died from cancer in 2015 – a figure that corresponds to an average of over 7500 cancer-related deaths per day.
The research results also show that, among men, the five most common cancers are of the lung, stomach, esophagus, liver and colorectal, which together account for about two-thirds of all cancer cases.
Among women, the most common cancers are breast, lung and bronchus, stomach, colorectal and esophagus, accounting for nearly 60 percent of all cases.
Breast cancer alone is expected to account for 15 percent of all new cancers among the country’s female population.
Two other relevant facts are that both the incidence and mortality rates for all cancers in men (165.9 per 100,000) are double those in women (88.8 per 100,000). There is also a higher incidence rate for cancers in rural areas when compared to urban areas. This fact exposes the disadvantages of those living in rural areas, namely in the effectiveness in delivery of clinical care.
Tobacco smoking appears in the report as accountable for about 25 percent of all cancer deaths in China. An added concern lies in the fact that, in 2010, over 50 percent of adult Chinese men were current smokers, and smoking rates in adolescents and young adults are still rising.
Air pollution is another critical factor in these results, and China’s air pollution is considered to be among the worst in the world. The low quality of the air in indoor areas also, due to using coal and other biomass fuels for heating and cooking, and the contamination of soil and drinking water contribute to the Chinese population’s increasing exposure to environmental carcinogens.
According to the most up-to-date data from the Health Bureau (SSM), treated in accordance with the International Classification of Diseases, Tenth Revision, Clinical Modification classification system (ICD-10-CM), malignant tumors (which represent the majority of all cancers) have been the main cause of death in Macau for several years.
According to the data reports from the same government department, cancer rose from being responsible for 30.9 percent of all deaths in 2012 to 36.6 percent in 2014, while circulatory and respiratory diseases ranked second and third (in 2014) respectively, accounting for 23.8 percent and 16.6 percent.