Expands the scope of breast cancer to spread in developing countries

Thursday, November 5, 2009

WASHINGTON - expands the scope of breast cancer to spread in developing countries where the mortality rate is higher due to lack of prevention measures and access to treatments, according to an American experts Monday on the eve of this conference on the subject.

Said Felicia Noel, an expert in public health at Harvard University (Massachusetts, north-east United States) "is enough that breast cancer affects women in rich countries, mainly, but we discovered recently that it also affects women in developing countries."

Noel and attributed this phenomenon to a decline of infectious diseases and malnutrition and improve prolong life in these countries.

According to the figures, the Institute of Public Health at Harvard University, the 1,35 million new cases of breast cancer will be recorded in the world of 2009 and this represents the 10,5% of all cancers. And, consequently, breast cancer occupies second place after lung cancer.

The same study predicted an increase of 26% in cases of breast cancer diagnosis of any 1,7 million new infections by 2020. The focus of most of these cases in countries with middle-income or limited.

But as of this year will go down more than 55% of the 450 thousand deaths from this disease in developing countries that do not have available sufficient means to provide early diagnosis and effective treatment.

And thus estimated the probability of dying from breast cancer, which is one of the most treatable cancers that someone early, with 56% in low-income countries, up 39% in middle-income countries, up 24% in developed countries.

In view of this situation, decided to health experts, including Felicia Noel disease specialists and cancer from the Faculty of Medicine at Harvard and the Institute of Dana-Farber Cancer Center in Boston (Massachusetts) forming a working team and the organization of an international conference on this topic will be held at Harvard University, between the third and the fifth of November.

It is expected the presence of representatives from more than fifty countries.

The Dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Julio Swiss "We have to rely on approaches that have been adopted successfully to combat other diseases such as tuberculosis and HIV (AIDS) in order to fight against breast cancer and other cancers in the least favored."

The Swiss "Ten years ago were not anti-virus discards used in the treatment of HIV Allied + in the reach of developing countries due to the high price tag." He continued, "but that the organization of movement on a global level was allowed to change the data" and make these treatments available to a large number of patients in developing countries.

According to the Harvard experts that only 5% of the resources allocated to cancer all in the world spent in developing countries.