Experts Urge More Efforts to Fight Cancer in Poor Countries

24 August 2010

Felicia Knaul of Harvard University is one of the authors of the Lancet paper and also a cancer survivor.

This is the VOA Special English Health Report.

Health experts are calling for action to expand cancer care and control in the developing world. A paper published by the medical journal Lancet says cancer was once thought of mostly as a problem in the developed world. But it says cancer is now a leading cause of death and disability in poor countries.

Experts from Harvard University and other organizations urge the international community to fight cancer aggressively. They say it should be fought the way HIV/AIDS has been fought in Africa.

Cancer kills more than seven and a half million people a year worldwide. The experts say almost two-thirds are in low-income and middle-income countries.

They say cancer kills more people in developing countries than AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. But they say the world spends only five percent of its cancer resources in those countries.

Felicia Knaul from the Harvard Medical School was one of the authors of the paper. She was in Mexico when she was found to have breast cancer. She received treatment there. She says the experience showed her the sharp divide between the rich and the poor in treating breast cancer.

FELICIA KNAUL: "And we are seeing more and more how this is attacking young women. It's the number two cause of death in Mexico for women thirty to fifty-four. All over the developing world, except the poorest-poorest, it’s the number one cancer-related death among young women. And, I think we have to again say that there is much more we could do about it than we are doing about it."