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In a study reported in The Lancet Oncology, McIntosh et al identified components of global funding for cancer research—both public and philanthropic—between 2016 and 2020. Study Details The study used data from the UberResearch Dimensions database and Cancer Research UK data on human cancer...
The Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) has called for global action to improve public health and prevent millions of deaths from cancer and other noncommunicable diseases by drastically reducing air pollution in light of World Environment Day on June 5, 2023. "Creating cleaner and...
Paula Aristizabal, MD, MAS, of the University of California, San Diego, and Rady Children’s Hospital, talks about using a health systems strengthening approach to improve leukemia care and survival in a public Mexican hospital in the region of the border between the United States and Mexico. The demonstrated increase in overall survival across a decade after implementation of the program seems to validate the use of such models, not only to improve clinical outcomes, but also to build sustainable hospital capacity, financially and organizationally (Abstract 1502).
A new global health initiative, the Access to Oncology Medicines (ATOM) Coalition, may be capable of reducing the burden of suffering and death from cancer in low- and middle-income countries by improving patient access to essential cancer medicine. Gilberto Lopes, MD, FASCO, MBA, will highlight...
The implementation of a collaborative program between North American and Mexican medical institutions to achieve sustainable, high-quality care at a public hospital in the United States–Mexico border region for children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and improve outcomes has resulted in...
The fight against cancer has made remarkable progress worldwide over the past decade. Through corporate investment in research and technology, the incidence of cancer and death rates in developed nations have steadily declined. The number of people living longer and fuller lives after a cancer...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Dov Zippel, MD, a surgical oncologist at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, Israel, where he is Head of the Meirav Breast Center. Dr. Zippel is the current President of ...
In this installment of our Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Kelly M. McMasters, MD, PhD, who, for the past 27 years, has directed a basic and translational science lab studying adenovirus-mediated cancer gene therapy and melanoma biomarkers....
Cancer is a leading cause of death in every country worldwide.1 In 2020, almost 10 million people died of cancer, a number that is expected to rise to 16.3 million by 2040.2 In addition, cancer incidence continues to grow, driven by an aging and growing population and changes in the prevalence and...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, guest editor, Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Satish Gopal, MD, MPH, Director of the Center for Global Health at the National Cancer Institute (NCI). In this role, he oversees the development of initiatives and...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology, guest editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Rajendra Toprani, MBBS, MS, MCh, Head of the Department of Head and Neck Surgical Oncology at HCG Cancer Centre, Ahmedabad, India. Dr. Toprani’s areas of interest include oral,...
On February 6, 2023, a powerful 7.8-magnitude earthquake, followed by a second 7.5-magnitude quake, struck southeast Turkey and northwest Syria. To date, the quakes and several major aftershocks have killed nearly 52,000 citizens—more than 45,000 in Turkey and more than 6,700 in Syria—and injured...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Kristin Flowers, MD, a general surgeon at Tanana Valley Clinic at Fairbanks Memorial Hospital in rural Alaska. Dr. Flowers’ surgical areas of interest include treating...
The World Health Organization (WHO) has released a new Global Breast Cancer Initiative Framework, providing a roadmap to attain targets to save 2.5 million lives from breast cancer by 2040. The new framework recommends that countries implement three pillars of health promotion—early detection,...
The Union for International Cancer Control (UICC)—in light of World Cancer Day, taking place on February 4—has called on governments around the world to prioritize policy actions to reduce preventable cancers caused by tobacco use and the consumption of alcohol and ultraprocessed foods, including...
In a study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Bhatia et al found that boys were significantly more likely than girls to be diagnosed with childhood cancers in India. Study Details The retrospective multicohort study involved individual data from patients aged 0 to 19 years from hospital-based records ...
In the population-based SURVCAN-3 study reported in The Lancet Oncology, Soerjomataram et al identified cancer survival rates in 32 countries in Africa, Central and South America, and Asia. They found that disparities for many cancer types reflect the standing of countries according to the Human...
World Cancer Day 2023 is now only 1 month away! Led by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) and organized annually on February 4, World Cancer Day is a global initiative to improve awareness and knowledge of cancer risks and better prevent, detect, and treat the disease. World Cancer...
After a 4-year in-person hiatus because of the COVID-19 global pandemic, the World Cancer Congress, hosted by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), held its first hybrid in-person and virtual meeting in October in Geneva. The conference brought together more than 2,000 attendees from...
The ASCO Post is pleased to continue this occasional special focus on the worldwide cancer burden. In this issue, we feature a close look at the cancer incidence and mortality rates in Bolivia. The aim of this special feature is to highlight the global cancer burden for various countries of the...
As reported in The Lancet Oncology by Botta et al, the population-based EUROCARE-6 study has shown an improvement in 5-year survival rates and estimated cure fractions across patients with childhood cancers diagnosed between 2010 and 2013 vs previous years. Findings differed among cancer types and...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Living a Full Life series, Guest Editor Jame Abraham, MD, FACP, spoke with C.S. Pramesh, MS, FRCS, Director of the Tata Memorial Hospital and Professor and Head of Thoracic Surgery at the Tata Memorial Centre, Mumbai, India. Dr. Pramesh is the Convener of the...
To achieve its goal of eliminating cervical cancer, the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling on all countries “to reach and maintain an incidence rate of below 4 per 100,000 women.” Doing so would depend on the following: A total of 90% of girls being fully vaccinated against human...
The Republic of Austria is a high-income, landlocked country in south-central Europe and has been a member of the European Union since 1995.1 Vienna, the capital city of nearly 2 million people, is regularly ranked among the most livable cities in the world.2 The total population of Austria is more ...
In our continuing effort to connect and learn more about our international oncology colleagues, The ASCO Post recently spoke with Rossana Berardi, MD, Professor in Medical Oncology and Director of the Postgraduate School of Oncology at the Università Politecnica Marche, Ancona, Italy, where she is...
In 2020, 4.4 million women died from cancer worldwide, leaving behind an estimated 1.04 million maternal orphans (defined as children aged 18 years and younger who have lost their mother), according to the results from a study by Guida et al presented during a press conference at the Union for...
With the aging of the world population, geriatric oncology is becoming a mainstay. Over the past year in The ASCO Post, we published a couple of articles on the history of oncology, including one on the history of geriatric oncology in the United States and Europe. Our goal was to promote a...
In the more than 7 months since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, cancer care for Ukrainian citizens has changed dramatically. Ukraine was once a country able to provide its approximately 160,000 newly diagnosed patients with cancer each year with modern diagnostic methods, including...
Globally, the population is aging, with the number of people aged 60 and older projected to double from 1 billion worldwide in 2020 to 2.1 billion by 2050. Given the aging population, coupled with the risk of cancer increasing with age, an exponential rise in cases of older adults diagnosed with...
On September 9, the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO), together with the European Oncology Nursing Society (EONS), announced the launch of the Europe-wide “Cancer Prevention Across Europe” campaign (PrEvCan) aimed at reducing the burden of cancer. The announcement was made at the opening ...
Over recent decades, more and more adults under the age of 50 are developing cancer. A recently published study revealed that the incidence of early-onset cancers (those diagnosed before age 50)—including breast, colon, esophageal, kidney, liver, and pancreatic cancers, among others—has...
In our continuing effort to connect and learn more about our international oncology colleagues, The ASCO Post recently spoke with Rossana Berardi, MD, Professor in Medical Oncology and Director of the Postgraduate School of Oncology at the Università Politecnica Marche, Ancona, Italy, where she is...
Pilar Garrido, MD, PhD, is Head of the Medical Oncology Department, University Hospital Ramón y Cajal, Madrid. She is also Co-Director of the Cancer Research Group at Instituto Ramón y Cajal de Investigación Sanitaria (IRYCIS). Her main areas of research and clinical interest are thoracic tumors,...
In an analysis from the Global Burden of Disease Study 2019 reported in The Lancet, researchers from the GBD 2019 Cancer Risk Factors Collaborators found that cancers attributable to behavioral, environmental/occupational, and metabolic risk factors accounted for 44% of all cancer deaths globally...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Ahmad Bashir Barekzai, MD, FACS, Consultant Surgical Oncologist at Ali Abad Teaching Hospital, an affiliated hospital to Kabul University of Medical Science, Kabul,...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with Kevin Billingsley, MD, MBA, FACS, Chief Medical Officer of the Smilow Cancer Hospital and Yale Cancer Center. Although interracial marriage is common in the United States...
In countries with a high income, research in oncology is sponsored by funding agencies and industry, which has meaningfully improved survival outcomes of patients with cancer. In contrast, the African continent is disadvantaged in all aspects of human development, particularly in the fields of...
A study that surveyed cancer screening data included in medical journals worldwide from January 2020 into December 2021 showed significant decreases in the number of screenings for breast, colorectal, and cervical cancers during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings of the study,...
In Ukraine, with a population of about 44 million, there are more than 1.3 million patients with cancer. Approximately 160,000 new cases of cancer are diagnosed each year.1 In almost every region, there are local cancer centers; specialized oncologic centers are located in large cities. In Kyiv,...
Cancer cases and deaths are expected to double in Africa over the next 2 decades, according to findings from a study published by Sharma et al in Frontiers in Medicine. The study also revealed that the region lacks sufficient health-care resources and infrastructure to handle this growing cancer...
In this installment of The ASCO Post’s Global Oncology series, Guest Editor Chandrakanth Are, MBBS, MBA, FRCS, FACS, spoke with surgical oncologist Héctor Martínez-Said, MD, of the Melanoma Clinic at NCI Mexico. Dr. Martínez-Said’s maternal grandfather was part of a Lebanese immigration movement...
The Moroccan Cancer Society (MCS; Société Marocaine de Cancérologie/https://smc.ma) was created in 1992 by a group of Moroccan medical and radiation oncologists, surgeons, and pathologists who had led the field in the 1980s. To date, this scientific society has more than 350 members practicing in...
Clifford A. Hudis, MD, of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, and Karen E. Knudsen, PhD, MBA, of the American Cancer Society, discuss their collaboration, pooling their research and education resources to help empower patients with cancer and their families. Within 48 hours, Drs. Hudis and Knudsen were able to gear up a rapid response to the crisis in Ukraine, forming a clinical corps of volunteers to post information online in multiple languages, which helped patients navigate their care in the war-torn region. To date, 300 European cancer organizations have joined their efforts.
In a collaboration announced today, ASCO will work with the World Health Organization (WHO) to measure and improve the quality of cancer care internationally. The goal is to achieve health-related targets of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals and WHO Global Action Plan on...
Rakesh Chopra, MD, former Chairman and Head of the Oncology Department of Artemis Hospitals, was born in New Delhi, the capital of modern India. As a child, he attended the Lawrence School, Sanawar, a private boarding school in Himachal Pradesh, among beautiful sylvan surroundings. “Sanawar was...
Several recent studies examining the global burden of cancer on adolescents and young adults (AYAs) show the growing magnitude of the disease’s impact on the lives of individuals between the ages of 15 and 39. Although considered a rare occurrence, cancer in this age group has risen by...
The toll of cancer on children, especially those living in low-resource countries, is staggering. Each year, an estimated 400,000 children and adolescents worldwide develop cancer,1 and despite improved survival rates, the global 5-year net childhood cancer survival rate is only 37.4%,2 making...
During the first 9 months of the COVID-19 pandemic, patients with pediatric cancer from lower- and middle-income countries faced a higher risk of all-cause mortality than those in high-income countries, according to data presented by Elhadi et al at the American Association for Cancer Research...
Since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, the number of attacks on health-care facilities continues to mount. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), as of March 16, there have been 43 attacks on health facilities, including 34 attacks that have directly impacted health facilities and...
Today, ASCO and the European Cancer Organisation (ECO) held a virtual briefing with oncologists in Ukraine, Poland, and Romania to address the impact the war is having on patients with cancer displaced within Ukraine and those fleeing to neighboring countries. The briefing also included remarks...