Cancer can be a life-changing disease.
According to a new analysis from the World Health Organization (WHO)More than a third of all cancer cases worldwide are preventable.
And almost half of these cases include lung, stomach and cervical cancer.
This means that millions of fatal cancers can be prevented every year through medical intervention, behavior/lifestyle changes or addressing environmental pollutants.
Medical epidemiologist at WHO and senior author of the analysis, Isabelle Soerjomataram, said: “Tackling these preventable causes is one of the most powerful opportunities to reduce the global cancer burden.”
The analysis found that there were nearly 19 million new cases of cancer in 2022 and that approximately 38 percent of those diagnoses were associated with 30 modifiable risk factors.
These include tobacco smoking, alcohol consumption, high body mass index, insufficient physical activity, smokeless tobacco (such as chewing tobacco), a traditional stimulant known as areca nut, suboptimal breastfeeding, air pollution, ultraviolet radiation, infectious agents and more than a dozen occupational exposures.
The most important preventable factor linked to cancer is tobacco smoking. It was linked to 15 percent of all cancer cases that year.
For men, the risk was particularly high, as smoking contributed to 23 percent of all new cancer cases worldwide in men that year.
After smoking tobacco, the changing lifestyle factor is drinking alcohol. It was responsible for 3.2 percent of all new cancer cases (about 700,000 cases).
Infections, meanwhile, have been linked to about 10 percent of new cancer cases. In women, the majority of preventable cancer cases were due to the high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV), which can lead to cervical cancer.
The good news is that we now have a vaccine against HPV that prevents many of these associated diseases, but the percentage of people who have been vaccinated is quite low.
Meanwhile, rates of stomach cancer are higher among men and are usually linked to smoking and infections due to overcrowding, inadequate sanitation and poor access to clean water.
“By examining patterns across countries and populations, we can provide governments and individuals with more specific information to help prevent many cases of cancer before they start,” said André Ilbawi, WHO Cancer Control Team Leader and co-author of the analysis.
