China sees 3 mill new cancer cases a year; Half of Britons likely to get cancer

World Today

Every minute, six people in China are diagnosed with cancer, bringing more than 3 million new cancer cases to China every year. CCTV’s Grace Brown reported this story from Beijing.

The Beijing Cancer Hospital is one of two main cancer hospitals in the city that receives patients from all over China. Last year, it treated 500,000 cancer patients, 10-20 percent of whom were under the age of 40.

“Cancer is mostly related to people’s lifestyle. Most young people like to stay at work late and wake up late… To save time, they do not have their breakfast. The possibility to get gall bladder cancer is much higher than if you do have breakfast… Also, young people do not have their regular health check every year, but young people are very fragile to have this disease, including cancer,” chief surgeon of Beijing Cancer Hospital Zhang Ji said.

According to China’s latest cancer report, in 2012, 87 out of 100,000 Chinese aged 35-39 had a tumor. That rate rose to around 154 out of every 100,000 for Chinese aged 40-44.

As people around the globe mark World Cancer Day on Wednesday, Feb. 4, many health care workers in China hope that cancer awareness is growing.


Half of all British born after 1960 likely to get cancer

In Britain, research from a charity has suggested that half of all people in the U.K. born after 1960 will be diagnosed with the disease within their lifetime. The charity, Cancer Research U.K., said more must be done to prevent the disease. CCTV’s correspondent Richard Bestic reported this story from London.

According to organization, the scourge of cancer has been with British people a long time.

But the difference now, in terms of the British charity, is that half of adults born in the country since 1960 can expect to suffer from the disease. That’s up from one in three.

Cancer experts said more people are getting the disease because of the way they live, but mainly because they’re living longer.

“Old people have higher rates of cancer than young people, so for that reason alone we will have more cases of cancer occurrence,” King College London Professor Henrik Moller said.

The number of people living with cancer in the U.K. will reach a record high of 2.5 million this year, according to the British charity MacMillan Cancer Support.

And the number of those over 65 with cancer is up by nearly a quarter in the last five years.

“The real potential is to improve the therapies and the quality of care, and perhaps even before we get to that point, the real potential is to be successful with prevention of disease in the first place,” Moller said.

The good news is more of people are surviving cancer, according to Cancer U.K. as medicine continues to make strides.