Brandon El
September 3rd 2010
Heart Disease is very harmful and one of the biggest health problems and killer of people in our world today. After recent research health experts are now stating that they believe shortly cancer will beat out heart disease as the world's biggest killer. According to the WHO (World Health Organization) the number of cancer diagnoses this year have risen significantly and are expected to hit 12 million by the end of this year alone. They believe this rise has occurred due to developing nations like China and India's recent rise in use of tobacco and don't believe it will level off anytime soon. The WHO estimates a 1% growth of cases and deaths each year and even more in the said place to include Russia. Together these three places make up more than 40% of smokers worldwide and there must be some sort of change soon or they predict by 2030 there will be 17 million deaths a year just from cancer.
The WHO now is planning to hold a conference to address the matter at hand and bring different organizations together and solve this problem. even asking the US to take a place in helping to fund cervical cancer vaccinations in these areas and also ratify the Tobacco Control Treaty. Though the situation looks bad the Cancer Society's CEO, John Seffrin, still has this to say in optimism; "If we can take action, we can keep the numbers from going where they would otherwise go."
My reaction to this story is complete astonishment. I had no idea that tobacco use was climbing so severely overseas. The numbers are what really caught my eye, the estimate that by 2030 there will be 27 million new cases of cancer and 17 million deaths because of it! That's ridiculous and very upsetting and to add to that haven't medical researches shown that smoking cigarettes tends attract poor eating diets and less physical exercise? So then its safe to say obesity rates worldwide would too begin to rise as well. I hope that the World health organization does find some sort of solution before all those people run the chances of losing their lives and hurting others through second hand smoke.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1093144/Cancer-overtake-heart-disease-worlds-biggest-killer-2010.html
3 comments:
I agree and I was really shocked as well when I read this story. I can't believe that tobacco use is increasing because I always thought the number of users was going down. This is a pretty serious matter because heart disease has been the leading cause of death for several years.
I definitly agree that there needs to be more of a global awareness of smoking and what it can do to you. We need to try to prevent it somehow. However, I wasn't suprised of cancer becoming more deadly than heart disease just because the fact of hearing more and more people having cancer. I hardly hear of someone having heart disease. Im also not suprised that the smoking has increased overseas. I mean if we have a high average of smokers in the United States, why wouldn't other countries not smoke. Smoking is world wide and has been world wide since before I was born.
This story surprised me, I really didnt think that cancer rates would overtake heart disease. I recently read that cancer is more often caused from environmental causes rather than genetic defects so at least that means we have some control in decreasing the number of new cases. Hopefully education about the danger of smoking will prevent that number from climbing so high.
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