New Delhi, February 04: Advocating the need for awareness on early diagnosis for prevention of cancer on the eve of World Cancer Day, leading health experts feel over 30 per cent of such cases can be prevented by simple measures like regular exercise and quitting smoking.
According to National Cancer Control Programme, around nine lakh people die due to cancer every year in India, while WHO says that annual global deaths due to the disease would jump to 17 million by 2030 from a projected 7.6 million this year if people do not take urgent action to avoid risk factors.
“Many cancers can be prevented through simple measures like giving up smoking, limiting alcohol intake, taking healthy diet and doing regular exercise,” says Dr Samir Parikh of Max healthcare.
“No longer we are just looking at secondary prevention, which was basically seeing how we could modify patients life to decrease the risks or how to detect cancer early,” Parikh says, adding “We’re looking at primary prevention, which means stopping yourself from being exposed to cancer-causing features”.
Another oncologist Dr Amit Bhargava from BLK Memorial Hospital says, “Now the focus is on cancers caused by infectious diseases, like cervical, stomach and liver cancers.”
“The primary prevention that everybody’s talking about now is cervical cancer vaccination,” he says.
—PTI