China's Cancer Rates Approaching Those Of Western Countries - Xinhua

[hatrack]

BEIJING, April 16 (Xinhuanet) -- "Cancer has become an effective killer not only in northern China's poverty-stricken Cixian countyin Hebei Province, but also in Shanghai, China's most developed city, experts revealed on Friday.

There are 300 cases of various cancers in every 100,000 Shanghai residents, an incidence level close to that of western developed countries, said a recent report from the Shanghai Centerof Disease Control and Prevention, according to Saturday's "China Daily". And in Cixian county, among female residents alone, in 2002 rates of oesophagus cancer reached 136 per 100,000, said Wang Shijie, president of the Hebei Tumor Hospital.

Wang made the above remarks at the opening ceremony of a week-long nationwide campaign to raise public awareness of cancer control. Cancer has become China's top killer, causing 1.5 million deaths annually, said Kong Lingzhi, director of the Division of Non-communicable Diseases Control and Management of the Ministry of Health.

The early diagnosis and treatment of the disease has been repeatedly shown as the most effective way to fight various cancers, said Peng Yu, director of the executive council of the China Cancer Research Foundation. Unfortunately, the majority of Chinese cancer patients are onlydiagnosed after the cancer has reached a terminal stage due to a shortage of financial support from the government, the laggard public health service network, and poor public awareness, experts said."

EDIT

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2005-04/16/content_2837135.htm

[illflem]

1. I realize they are degrading their environment

but the Chinese are also living longer. This usually leads to high cancer rates.