The Philippines experienced the world’s highest increase of breast cancer incidence from the year 1980 to 2010 and today, the chances women of getting breast cancer is 1 in every 13.
In a recent study of 187 countries, global breast cancer incidence increased from 641,000 cases in 1980 to 1,643,000 cases in 2010 for an annual rate of increase of 3.1%. More than two-thirds of cases of breast cancer in 2010 were women aged 50 years and above - though most of whom were in developed countries with an increase of 104%, developing countries in this age range increased by 274%. For women between the ages of 15 and 49, there were twice as many breast cancer cases in developing countries with a 266% increase than in developed countries with only 63%. A total of 425,000 women died from breast cancer - 68,000 of whom were between the ages of 15 and 49 in developing countries.
Among countries with not less than 10,000 cases in 2010, the Philippines ranked 11th among the top 20 countries with the highest incidence rate of breast cancer and is now among the 6th grouping of countries where 1 in every 13 women will get breast cancer. The Philippine risk of mortality is one in 49 cases.
The most alarming finding is that the Philippines Southeast Asia ’s 479% increase with 1 in 20. North America continues to have the highest incidence rate of 1 in 8 followed by Western Europe and Australasia with 1 in 10.
On October 1st will be held the 2nd Annual Symposium of the newly formed Philippine Breast Cancer Society (PBCS) at the St. Luke’s Medical Center - Global City. A society exclusively composed of medical doctors led by surgeons, oncologists and radiologists regarded as experts in the field of breast cancer, it must be asked of them why they continue to peddle expensive, unsuccessful and potentially carcinogenic technologies/treatments to the their patients. The breast cancer risk of mortality in the USA is 1 in 46 while that of Southeast Asia is 1 in 78 and yet they continue to ignore the healing benefits of non-toxic and non-invasive interventions. Shouldn’t they be looking at prevention along with safe methods of detection? Why has there been such an outrageous increase of breast cancer incidence despite of all recent trends in the medical science and all the programs of the Department of Heath and the Philippine Cancer Society? Why won’t they look at environmental and occupational exposures? Why do they consistently address the wrong questions?
The Philippine Breast Cancer Network (PBCN) fully supports the call to the UN and the WHO by over 100 scientists, health professionals, civil society representatives and other stakeholders, led by Dr Annie J Sasco and André Cicolella from France, to tackle the challenge of non-communicable diseases (particularly breast cancer) by global action, especially in low-and-medium income countries, including environmental health factors and occupational disease prevention.
Source of data: Study report of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) as published in the September 2011 issue of The Lancet medical journal. IHME was launched in 2007 with funding from Bill & Melinda Gates foundation and the State of Washington and is based in Seattle , Washington , USA
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