“Cancer will remain one of the leading causes of death worldwide.” – World Health Organization
“I don’t know where I’m now physically, but I have to wait for that,” President Rodrigo R. Duterte told a dinner he hosted recently for soldiers and police officers at the presidential palace.
In a speech that was televised nationally, he admitted: “I will tell you if its cancer, it’s cancer. If it’s third stage, no more treatment. I will not prolong the agony in this office or anywhere.”
To most people, having cancer is already a death sentence. The bad news is: The global cancer burden is estimated to have risen to 18.1 million new cases and 9.6 million deaths in 2018, according to a new report released by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC).
The report said one in 5 men and one in 6 women worldwide develop cancer during their lifetime, and one in 8 men and one in 11 women die from the disease. Worldwide, the total number of people who are alive within 5 years of a cancer diagnosis, called the 5-year prevalence, is estimated to be 43.8 million.
The latest estimates on the global burden of cancer, called the GLOBOCAN 2018 database, is accessible online as part of the IARC Global Cancer Observatory. It provides estimates of incidence and mortality in 185 countries for 36 types of cancer and for all cancer sites combined.
“The increasing cancer burden is due to several factors, including population growth and ageing as well as the changing prevalence of certain causes of cancer linked to social and economic development,” IARC said in a press statement. “This is particularly true in rapidly growing economies, where a shift is observed from cancers related to poverty and infections to cancers associated with lifestyles more typical of industrialized countries.”
IARC is part of the World Health Organization. Its mission is to coordinate and conduct research on the causes of human cancer, the mechanisms of carcinogenesis, and to develop scientific strategies for cancer control.
Cancers of the lung, female breast, and colorectum are the top three cancer types in terms of incidence, and are ranked within the top five in terms of mortality (first, fifth, and second, respectively). “Together, these three cancer types are responsible for one third of the cancer incidence and mortality burden worldwide,” the report said.
Cancers of the lung and female breast are the leading types worldwide in terms of the number of new cases. “For each of these types, approximately 2.1 million diagnoses are estimated in 2018, contributing about 11.6% of the total cancer incidence burden,” said the report.
Colorectal cancer (1.8 million cases, 10.2% of the total) is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer, prostate cancer is the fourth (1.3 million cases, 7.1%), and stomach cancer is the fifth (1.0 million cases, 5.7%).
Lung cancer, the report pointed out, is also responsible for the largest number of deaths (1.8 million deaths, 18.4% of the total), because of the poor prognosis for this cancer worldwide. It is followed by colorectal cancer (881,000 deaths, 9.2%), stomach cancer (783,000 deaths, 8.2%), and liver cancer (782,000 deaths, 8.2%).
Female breast cancer ranks as the fifth leading cause of death (627,000 deaths, 6.6%) because the prognosis is relatively favorable, at least in more developed countries.
The report singled out lung cancer as the most commonly diagnosed cancer in men (14.5% of the total cases in men and 8.4% in women). It is also the leading cause of cancer death in men (22.0%, that is, about one in 5 of all cancer deaths).
The other most commonly diagnosed cancer in men are prostate cancer (13.5%) and colorectal cancer (10.9%) for incidence and liver cancer (10.2%) and stomach cancer (9.5%) for mortality.
With one in four of all new cancer cases diagnosed in women, breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer in women (24.2%), the report found out. Breast cancer is also the cancer that is most common in 154 of the 185 countries surveyed.
Breast cancer is also the leading cause of cancer death in women (15.0%), followed by lung cancer (13.8%) and colorectal cancer (9.5%), which are also the third and second most common types of cancer, respectively; cervical cancer ranks fourth for both incidence (6.6%) and mortality (7.5%).
“Cancer remains a national health priority in the country with significant implications for individuals, families, communities, and the health system,” states the Philippine Cancer Control Program (PCCP) of the Department of Health.
In its figures released in late 2017, the Cancer Coalition Philippines said 11 new cancer cases are reported each day. Every hour, seven adults and eight children die of cancer, the coalition claims.
One out of every 10 deaths in the country is caused by cancer, the Philippine Statistics Authority reports.
The Philippine Cancer Society, Inc. (PCSI) says 91% of cancer occur between the ages of 35 and above. Three-fourths of all cancer cases in the country emerge among those between the ages 60 and above.
Incidence of cancer is higher among females than males, the PCSI says.
Among Filipino men, the six most common sites of cancer are lung, liver, colon/rectum, prostate, stomach, and leukemia. Among Filipino women, the six most common sites are breast, cervix, lung, colon/rectum, ovary and liver.
Cancer comes from the Greek word karnikos, which means “the crab.” It is not a modern disease. Some of our apelike ancestors undoubtedly suffered from it, so did the dinosaurs. In fact, says Dr. Robert Weinberg, a molecular biologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “it is a risk that all multicellular organisms run.”
Each time a human cell divides, it must replicate its DNA, a biochemical manuscript some 3 billion characters long. In the course of transcribing such a lengthy document, even a skilled typist could be expected to make mistakes, and cells, like typist, occasionally err.
More often than not, the mistakes they make are minor and quickly repaired by proteins that serve as a miniature mechanics. Occasionally though, cells with defects in their DNA will continue to divide, eventually forming small growths. That’s the time trouble starts.
“The more cell-division cycles an organism undergoes, the more likely it to accumulate colonies of abnormal cells, each of the offspring of a single progenitor,” wrote Time science writer J. Madeleine Nash. “By the time human reach middle adulthood, then their bodies contain millions of cells that have taken at least one step toward cancer.”
“Cancer may be present in very many ways: as a lump, some change in body function, bleeding, anemia or weight loss – occasionally the first symptoms being from a metastasis,” explains The New American Desk Encyclopedia. “Less often tumors produce substances mimicking the action of hormones or producing remote effects such as neuritis.” Neuritis is any disorder of the peripheral nervous system, which interferes with sensation, the nerve control of muscle, or both.
Like taxes and death, cancer is no respecter. It strikes anyone – rich and poor, unknown and famous. Corazon Aquino (colon cancer), Redford White (brain cancer), Francis Magalona (leukemia), Rudy Fernandez (periampullary cancer), Marilou Diaz-Abaya (breast cancer), Charlie Davao (colon cancer), Susan Fuentes (colon cancer), June Keithley (breast cancer), Mario O’Hara (leukemia), Angelo Castro, Jr. (lung cancer), Mark Gil (liver cancer), Johnny Delgado (prostate cancer), and Rio Diaz (colon cancer).
