Poverty problems boost cancer in developing world

January 17, 2008 by News Editor

Cancer is becoming an increasing problem for developing countries, and issues commonly associated with poverty are making it worse.

This was the message from specialists at an online seminar on 'Cancer and the Developing World', organised by the US National Cancer Institute and the American Society of Clinical Oncology last week (20 December).

Joe Hartford, director of the National Cancer Institute's Office of International Affairs, highlighted the risk posed by infectious viral diseases commonly associated with cancers, such as human papillomavirus with cervical cancer, viral hepatitis B and C with liver cancer, and HIV with Kaposi's sarcoma. 

"In more developed countries, infectious diseases account for eight per cent of cancers, while in developing countries infections account for 26 per cent," said Hartford.

But for many countries — India and Nigeria, for example — the cost of vaccinations against human papillomavirus and hepatitis is still too high to make them available for the population in general.

The seminar also heard how an increase in smoking will increase the number of cancer deaths in the developing world. Today it is responsible for 30 per cent of cancer deaths in the developing world.

The five million deaths worldwide caused by tobacco each year are now evenly distributed among developing and developed countries. The WHO say this is expected to grow to 10 million by 2020 — by which time 70 per cent of those deaths will be in the developing world.

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