UN nuclear and health agencies team up to fight cancer in Eastern Mediterranean
With cancer rates anticipated to increase in the Eastern Mediterranean by as much as 180 per cent in the next 15 years, the United Nations atomic watchdog agency - better known for its efforts to combat the spread of nuclear weapons - is teaming up with the UN World Health Organization (WHO) to fight the scourge on several fronts.
With cancer rates anticipated to increase in the Eastern Mediterranean by as much as 180 per cent in the next 15 years, the United Nations atomic watchdog agency - better known for its efforts to combat the spread of nuclear weapons - is teaming up with the UN World Health Organization (WHO) to fight the scourge on several fronts.
“We need more exchange of information, higher levels of awareness, and better levels of cancer care and treatment,” the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Programme of Action for Cancer Therapy (PACT), Massoud Samiei, said of the recently signed agreement between the two to improve prevention and treatment in the region.
PACT was set up in 2004 to respond to the chronic shortage of cancer treatment capacity in developing countries by taking radiotherapy to where it is most needed.
Right now, cancer risk factors in the region - which includes Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Morocco, Oman, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen - are inadequately studied and early screening and prevention are not sufficiently developed, Mr. Samiei said.
“In the past 20 years a large fraction of cancers have turned from fatal to curable in western countries largely due to improvement of early detection,” WHO regional director Hussein Al Gezairy said of the disease, which claims 272,000 lives each year in the region.
“Unfortunately, this may not be the same for the Eastern Mediterranean region where late detection and diagnosis is a major setback which is perpetuating the stigma that cancer is equal to death. We believe that this stigma can be reversed,” he added.
Cancer today is the second leading cause of death worldwide, claiming more lives than HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined. More than 70 per cent of all cancer deaths now occur in low- and middle-income countries, where resources for prevention, diagnosis and treatment are limited or non-existent.