Health authorities drum up cancer awareness

Cancer is one of the leading chronic diseases impacting the health of local residents, and the Shanghai Health Commission is raising awareness about this debilitating and deadly disease as the National Cancer Prevention and Control Week kicks off on Wednesday.

In China, the latest figures on cancer are from 2016 due to statistical availability. There were 74,000 people diagnosed with cancer in Shanghai in 2016; this implies an incidence rate of 514 among every 100,000 residents, keeping rising from the previous years. The three top cancers are lung, colorectal and thyroid cancer, said the local health commission.

The incidence of cancer in Shanghai was 414 per 100,000 in 2010 and 326 between 2000 and 2005.

About 37,000 people died from cancer in 2016, putting the death rate at 256 per 100,000 people, and making cancer the second leading killer of local residents, following cardio and cerebral vascular disease.

The five-year survival rate of cancer is now 53 percent, which has been rising steadily by about 1 percentage point annually. So far, there are 450,000 people living with cancer in the city, about 3 percent of the total population.

Promotion of screening, early detection, diagnosis and regular treatment are key to cancer prevention and control, say authorities.

Shanghai Anti-Cancer Association and Shanghai Cancer Center jointly have released updated guidelines on cancer screening and prevention to give direction and education to the public.

The guidance, the third edition since it was first released in 2018, includes information about 20 common cancers, including information on screening.

“Early screening, diagnosis and treatment are important to lower cancer mortality and improve patients’ life quality,” said Dr Zheng Ying, director of cancer prevention department of Shanghai Cancer Center. “The majority of cancers can be cured or treated through early diagnosis and treatment. In our hospital, over 90 percent of early colorectal and cervical cancer and 97 percent of early breast cancer patients can achieve five-year survival, the clinical term for recovery.”

In the guidance, there are also tips for self risk evaluation and recommendations for medical help for people with high cancer risk, she said.

“Regular health checkups, healthy lifestyle and early screening are all effective for cancer prevention and control,” Zheng said.

Shanghai has carried out a community-level colorectal cancer screening campaign since 2013. So far, some 4.4 million people have received screenings and 18,500 people were detected with pre-cancer changes. A total of 3,895 people were found with colorectal cancer and 45.5 percent were in the early stages of the disease.