20,000 people a day die from cancer in 2007

MORE than 12 million new cases of cancer will have been diagnosed around the world in 2007, while 20,000 people a day, or 7.6m, will have died from the disease.

The projections are in the first report by the American Cancer Society, and are based on cancer and mortality rates in a 2002 database compiled by the International Agency for Research on Cancer.

It claimed 5.4m cancer cases and 2.9m deaths will occur in industrialised countries.

Here the most common kind of cancers are prostate, lung and colon cancer among men, and breast cancer, lung and colon cancer among women.

About 6.7m cancer cases and 4.7m deaths will take place in developing nations.

Co-author Ahmedin Jemal said: “The burden of cancer is increasing in developing countries as deaths from infectious diseases and childhood mortality decline and more people live to older ages when cancer most frequently occurs.

About 15% of all cancers are linked to infections, such as stomach, liver and uterine cancers. But in developing nations 26% of cancer cases are linked to infections, compared with 8% in industrialised countries.

“This cancer burden is also increasing as people in the developing countries adopt western lifestyles such as cigarette smoking, higher consumption of saturated fat and calorie-dense foods, and reduced physical activity,” said Mr Jemal.

The report predicts that more than one billion people will die from smoking-related diseases in the 21st century.

This compares with about 100m deaths in the 20th century.

About 5m people died from tobacco use in 2000, of which 30% had some form of cancer.

The WHO estimates that 84% of the world’s 1.3bn smokers live in developing nations.

If the trend continues, there will be about 2bn smokers around the world by 2030, of which half will die from smoking-related illnesses if they don’t quit.