A recent report from World Health Organization shows an increase in cancer cases worldwide with lung cancer in the lead and breast cancer increasing by one- fifth.
The recent report from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a France-based research arm of WHO, reveals an 11 percent rise in cancer cases in the last five years. Cancer affected 14.1 million people in 2012. Cancer deaths increased by 8.4 percent from 2008 to 2012.
The most common cancer is lung cancer with 13 percent prevalence, breast cancer accounts for 11 percent and Colorectum cancer 9 percent.
Around 57 percent new cancer cases and majority of cancer deaths (nearly 65 percent of the total number of cases) happened in the third world or under developed countries. This trend is likely to increase, according to a recent post on medical express.
Around 1.7 million women were detected with breast cancer in 2012, the WHO report reveals. Since 2008, breast cancer cases have gone up by more than 20 percent and death rates soared up by 14 percent, the report says.
Breast cancer is more wide spread in women. In 2012 around 522,000 breast cancer deaths were reported. It accounts for one in four of all cancers in women. Breast cancer is more common in the developing or the third world countries where there is no proper diagnosis and a lack of medical facilities. Also environmental pollution and changing lifestyles have added to the increasing incidences of breast cancer cases.
"This is partly because 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," said David Forman, head of the cancer division at IARC, in a statement.
Cervical cancer is the second most common cancer in under- developed countries. In African countries around 34.8 cases have been reported in every 100,000 women and nearly 22.5 percent of them die every year. The numbers widely vary from that in North America with prevalence of 6.6 percent cases in every 100,000 with a 2.25 percent mortality rate.
