Latin America Threatened By Mounting Cancer Epidemic, Study Finds

[HuffingtonPost]

By Asher Levine                

SAO PAULO, April 26 (Reuters) - Latin America's growing  prosperity is fueling a cancer epidemic that threatens to  overwhelm the region unless governments take urgent preventive  action, a study published on Friday warned.                

A multinational team of researchers found the current state  of cancer care and prevention in Latin America incompatible with  the socioeconomic changes taking place in the region, where an  increasingly urban populace faces mounting lifestyle-related  cancer risks.                

Writing in The Lancet Oncology medical journal, researchers  said Latin Americans are enjoying the benefits of growing  economic prosperity but also are leading longer, more sedentary  lives, accompanied by a rise in alcohol consumption, smoking and  obesity. That is not only leading to an increase in cancer  rates, which are expected to rise more than 33 percent in the  region by 2020, but a disproportionately high number of cancer  deaths.                

"If corrective action is not taken this problem will become  magnitudes of order bigger than it is today, it will create  massive human suffering and it will threaten the economies of  the region," Paul Goss, a professor at Harvard Medical School  who led the study, said at an event in Sao Paulo on Friday.                

While Latin Americans contract cancer at lower rates than  residents of the United States, they are nearly twice as likely  to die from it, the study said.                

Much of that has to do with the way cancer is treated in  Latin America. More than half of those in the region have little  or no health insurance and relatively few public health efforts  are focused on preventive medicine. That means most patients  seek treatment when they are at advanced stages of the disease  and often too sick to be saved.                

That type of care is not only ineffective but often very  expensive, draining already scarce resources from public  coffers, the study found.                                

IMMEDIATE CHANGES NEEDED                

The study recommended Latin American nations make major  changes to their healthcare policies, such as dedicating more  funds to public health, widening healthcare access so cancer  patients can be treated earlier and developing better national  cancer plans. It also envisions shifting funds away from costly  end-stage cancer treatment toward palliative care.                

While researchers speaking at Friday's event acknowledged  the difficulty of enacting such reforms quickly, they called on  governments to start with short-term solutions, such as raising  taxes on tobacco and providing families with cleaner-burning  wood stoves.                

The total cost of cancer to Latin American countries  currently is about $4 billion per year and stands to grow  precipitously, according to the study.                

"If we don't put these things on the agenda now, we won't be  prepared to deal with this in 10 or 15 years," said Carlos  Barrios, a professor at Brazil's Pontificia Universidade  Catolica do Rio Grande do Sul. "(At that point) the costs will  be likely be exorbitant."     (Editing by Todd Benson and Bill Trott)

Via: HuffingtonPost