Cancer is currently one of the leading causes of diseases and death in the world. Based on the cancer facts and figures by the American Cancer Society, there are more than 1.6 million estimated new cancer cases for 2014 with almost 600,000 deaths around the same year. These numbers are still high, but new research also suggests we're doing better.
In the latest report of the organization, there's a huge decline of cancer death rates in the country over the last 20 years. Since 1991, deaths have gone down to, on the average, 22 percent. Lung cancer has one of the biggest decreases at 36% and 11% between men and women, respectively.
The same scenario goes for other well-known cancers such as colon, prostate, and breast. In fact, breast cancer went down by almost 30% since 1989. This means that the decline in cancer death is about 169 for every 100,000 patients by 2011. This then translates to 1.5 million of saved lives.
The promising data, which have been obtained from the reports of three agencies including Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and National Cancer Institute, may be attributed to the advances we've made in terms of screening, detection, treatment, and maintenance. People are also becoming more aware of the risk factors and how to avoid them.
However, the fight isn't over yet. Rather, we should consider this as just the beginning. One of the major issues is the disparity of the decline. For example, among the races, the blacks are the most likely to die. The decline is also more prevalent in the northeast including New York and Massachusetts and least in the South.
Factors that may have caused these differences include obesity, poverty, gender, and access to available and necessary health care.
It's also projected that at least 1,600 people will diet of the disease every day in 2015.
