LONDON, (Reuters) – The number of people with cancer is set to surge by more than 75 percent across the world by 2030, with particularly sharp rises in poor countries as they adopt unhealthy “Westernised” lifestyles, a study said yesterday.
Many developing countries were expected to see a rise in living standards in coming decades, said the paper from the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in Lyon, France.
But those advances could come at a cost – an increase in cases of cancers linked to poor diet, lack of exercise and other bad habits associated with affluence and linked to diseases like breast, prostate and colorectal cancers, it added.
“Cancer is already the leading cause of death in many high-income countries and is set to become a major cause of morbidity (sickness) and mortality in the next decades in every region of the world,” said Freddie Bray from IARC’s cancer information section.
The study was the first to look at how present and future rates of cancer might vary between richer and poorer countries, as measured by the development rankings defined in the United Nations’ Human Development Index (HDI).
Researchers found poorly developed countries – mostly those in sub-Saharan Africa – had high numbers of cancers linked to infections – particularly cervical cancer, but also liver cancer, stomach cancer and Kaposi’s sarcoma.
By contrast, richer countries like Britain, Australia, Russia and Brazil had more cancers associated with smoking – such as lung cancer, and with obesity and diet.
