cancer in the 3rd world

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. 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.

“By 2020, cancer is expected to kill more than twice as many people worldwide as it did at the turn of the millennium. In low- and middle-income countries, however, the death rate will be more than five times greater than in the industrialized world,” says a report, published by Cantreat, a British nonprofit that advocates improved cancer treatment.

While 50% of cancers are controlled or cured in rich countries perhaps less than 15% are in the developing world. The report says globally one in eight deaths is caused by cancer.

Yet with everything, health of workers are calculated with $ signs. The American Cancer Society says cancer has the highest economic cost of any cause of death. It caused an estimated nine hundred billion dollars in economic losses worldwide in two thousand eight. That was one and a half percent of the world economy, and just losses from early death and disability. The study did not estimate direct medical costs. But it says the productivity losses are almost twenty percent higher than for the second leading cause of economic loss, heart disease.

The experts say cancer care does not have to be costly. For example, patients can be treated with lower-cost drugs that are off-patent. This means the drugs are no longer legally protected against being copied.
“Ensuring access to cancer treatments in developing countries is entirely feasible,” the report concludes.