SCIENTISTS SAY CANCER `URGENT HEALTH PRIORITY` IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES
Baku, August 17 (AZERTAC). According to a recent report published in the medical journal The Lancet, cancer is taking an increasing toll on people in poor countries. At least some of those deaths are preventable at a relatively low cost. Experts say it is time to wage war on cancer in the developing world in the same way that we fight HIV/AIDs.
Julio Frenk, Professor of Public Health and International Development at the Harvard School of Public Health, says there is a general assumption in low and middle-income countries that cancer cannot be cured.
"It`s not unlike what we faced with AIDS in the late 1990s, when antiretroviral therapy became available," he said. "That it`s expensive; people say it was impossible; it was too complex. It was exactly the same skepticism that we have today around cancer."
He says it is time those attitudes changed.
"The success of AIDS treatment shows that actually when you`re in very resource-constrained settings, you can actually diagnose and successfully treat and control a disease that otherwise, left without treatment, will produce enormous suffering and death," he said.
Eighty percent of cancer deaths take place in poor countries, but they are not receiving the funding to deal with the problem, says the study published Monday. Only five percent of global resources for cancer are spent in developing countries."
