cancer

Two reports have warned of an explosion in cancer deaths among women, with a toll, mainly from breast cancer, of some 5.5 million per year by 2030 -- roughly the population of Denmark.

This represented a near 60-percent increase in less than two decades, said an analysis conducted by the American Cancer Society (ACS), released Tuesday at the World Cancer Congress in Paris.

As the global population grows and ages, the highest toll will be among women in poor and middle-income countries, it said, and much of it from cancers which are largely preventable.

Breast cancer is usually associated with women, so when Thami Mabuza discovered a lump in his left breast, he thought it was a boil.

"I thought the boil would heal but months went by and it did not. I even forgot about the lump," Mabuza, 29, said.

"I was doing body building. So, one day, I realised that I had a pain on my left side. It was a lump. I have never met or heard of a man with breast cancer so I never thought it could be it," said Mabuza, a father of three from Cosmo City, Johannesburg.

CANCER cases and deaths continue to rise in Zimbabwe with the latest report released by the Zimbabwe Cancer Registry (ZCR) showing that 7,018 cases were recorded in 2014.

Of the recorded cases, 2,474 lives were lost to the chronic diseases including 126 children.

Cervical cancer remained the lead cancer followed by prostate, breast cancer, Kaposi sarcoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, non-melanoma skin cancer, oesophagus and colo-rectal in that order.

A new study found that up to half of patients in countries like Ghana and the Philippines who need radiation for cancer cannot access this treatment.
Many cancer patients in low- and middle-income nations who would benefit from radiation treatment don't receive it, a new study finds.

"In Ghana and the Philippines, for example, about eight in 10 cancer patients who need radiation therapy will not receive needed treatment," said study co-author Dr Elena Fidarova, a researcher at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, Austria.

The National Cancer Survivors Day Foundation has noted that currently there are more than 32 million cancer survivors worldwide and there are nearly 14.5 million people living with cancer in the United States.

The increase in the number of people diagnosed with cancer leads to an increased number of people living with many kinds of consequences.

Head at the Cancer Association of South Africa, Magdalene Seguin, says around 16 million people are expected to be diagnosed with cancer over the next 14 years.