People in poorer countries are starting to have higher rates of cancer, according to he medical journal The Lancet. Many of the deaths caused by cancer in these areas are able to be prevented at a relatively low cost, and should be treated as seriously as the HIV/AIDS problem is in these areas.
“It’s not unlike what we faced with AIDS in the late 1990s, when antiretroviral therapy became available,” he said. “That it’s expensive; people say it was impossible; it was too complex. It was exactly the same skepticism that we have today around cancer.”
Many people in low income to middle income countries do not believe that cancer can be cured, which is a big problem, as with the right treatments it is more than curable, and can be treated or prevented, even in poorer areas.
“The success of AIDS treatment shows that actually when you’re in very resource-constrained settings, you can actually diagnose and successfully treat and control a disease that otherwise, left without treatment, will produce enormous suffering and death,” he said.
With funding lacking in poorer areas for cancer treatments, many of the world’s cancer death are in these areas, with 80% of cancer related deaths happening in these areas.