Cancer is the culmination of ‘economic killer’ world as well as possibly the leading cause of death. This conclusion was presented the American Cancer Society in a recent report in the Global Cancer Conference, in China, this weekend.
Productivity looks at the cost of cancer treatment and causes of loss of lives than AIDS, malaria, flu and other diseases that spread from one person to another. Thus the report concluded.
“Chronic diseases include cancer, heart disease and diabetes cause more than 60% of deaths worldwide, but less than 3% of public and private funding for global health,” said Rachel Nugent of the Center for Global Development, a policy research group based in Washington.
“Money should not be taken away from the fight against a disease that spreads person-to-person, but the amount intended for cancer costs are way out of a very whack,” said Dr. Otis Brawley, medical director of the cancer society.
Economic cost of cancer is U.S. $ 895 billion in 2008, equivalent to 1.5% of the world’s gross domestic product, the report said. This fee is calculated from the disability and lost years of life – not the cost of treating these diseases are not discussed in the report.
World Health Organization (WHO) has long predicted that this year will follow cancer heart disease as the leading cause of death. Approximately 7.6 million people died of cancer in 2008, and approximately 12.4 million new cases diagnosed each year.
Tobacco use and obesity are triggers the increase of this chronic disease, whereas a vaccine and better treatments have led to decline in some infectious diseases.
Many parties have encouraged more attention to non-infectious causes of death, and since the current UN General Assembly has set a meeting this year. Some policy experts compare it to global initiative that led to major improvements in the cost of AIDS spending nearly a decade ago.
“This should be discussed at the UN – how we will deal with this burden, increasing chronic disease,” said Dr Andreas Ullrich, medical officer for cancer control at WHO.
The answer is ‘not against one another’, but more cooperation in areas of overlap, such as cancer with infectious causes, such as cervical cancer and HPV, human papillomavirus, Ullrich said.
Cancer Society report represents the first major effort to look at the economic costs in terms of global productivity. The author plans to publish in scientific journals at the meeting of the World Cancer Congress in Shenzen, China.
Researchers use the reports of death and disability WHO, World Bank and economic data. They counted years of life of disability, which reflects how long the impact of the disease and how people can live productive.
“It has become a more common way to view the global burden of disease,” said Wendy Max, a health economist at the University of California, San Francisco, who are familiar with the work and methods used by the researchers.
And lung cancer involves costs of U.S. $ 180 billion of a total of U.S. $ 895 billion. Smokers on average die 15 years earlier than nonsmokers, the report said. Cancer is following heart disease, the economic impact of U.S. $ 753 billion.
“The condition of the heart is which usually attacks people towards the end of their lives. While attacking the cancer much earlier in their life cycle,” said Hana Ross, lead author.
In a separate article published online by the British Medical Journal Lancet, cancer scientists and advocates urge more money to fight cancer in poor countries.
“Only 5% of cancer treatment and prevention of money flowing to countries that bear 80% burden of this disease,” said co-author, Dr. Julio Frenk, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health.
“We really do become victims of our own success, more people living with infectious diseases and living with cancer long enough, but the treatment gap remains,” he said.
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