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.