08
Feb
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About 2,500 cancer experts attending tomorrow in Geneva, a World Congress which will present the latest data and recommendations on a disease that annually kills about eight year-in-the-world-of-7-million-people-from-cancer-says-study.html">million people worldwide.
With 11 million new cancer cases each year, experts believe that this trend continue, by 2030 there will already be 16 million cases a year, and 11.5 million lives a year.
The World Cancer Congress to be held until Sunday 31 in the center of Geneva Palexpo congress is organized by the International Union Against Cancer (UICC), a leading NGO dedicated exclusively to this disease, which is the second leading cause of deaths in the world.
According to data from the World Health Organization (WHO), cancer caused 13 percent of all deaths worldwide
in 2007, its various types, led by the lung, which causes 1.4 million deaths year.
It is followed in order of mortality, stomach cancer (866,000 deaths per year), liver (653,000), colon (677,000) and breast (548,000 deaths).
By gender, among men the most common cancers are lung, stomach, liver, colorectal, esophagus, and prostate, while women suffer more from the breast, lung, stomach, colorectal and cervical cancer (cervical).
Experts believe that 30 percent of all cancers could be avoided if we modify or eliminate the major risk factors, according to a 2005 study.
Among these factors, the snuff is ranked first, which among the matters to be addressed in Congress set the tobacco control.
Other risk factors for contracting the cancer that experts say are overweight or obese, insufficient consumption of fruits and vegetables, physical inactivity, alcohol, sexually transmitted diseases, air pollution from combustion or smoke in places closed.
The cancer, which defines a large number of diseases can affect any body part is produced from a single cell that becomes malignant, a change that results from the interaction between genetic predisposition of a person and three categories of external factors.
These are: physical carcinogens such as ultraviolet and ionizing radiation, chemicals such as asbestos, smoke constituents snuff or arsenic, and biological, as some infections caused by viruses, bacteria or parasites.
Among infections that experts some cancers are associated with hepatitis B, liver cancer, Human Papilloma Virus with cervical cancer, or AIDS with Kaposi's sarcoma.
Therefore, among the broader prevention strategies that are aimed to avoid the risk factors, vaccines against human papilloma virus and hepatitis B or reducing exposure to sunlight.
The World Cancer Congress will be inaugurated in a ceremony with the participation of the president of Switzerland, Pascal Couchepin, President of Uruguay and expert oncologist, Tabaré Vázquez, and the WHO director general Margaret Chan.
A new report with preliminary results of a study conducted in 29 countries with the first comparative data on risk factors will be discussed during the Congress.
The leading expert on cervical cancer presented a monograph on the latest developments in disease prevention, coordinated by Dr. Xavier Bosch, director of International Affairs of the Catalan Institute of Oncology.
And on 30, just before the end of the Congress, the World Cancer Summit will bring together 64 politicians and experts to agree on objectives for 2020 and define the priority steps to be taken to comply.
This summit will be chaired by the president of the UICC, Franco Cavalli, and the former president of Ireland and human rights activist Mary Robinson.
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