Cancer Interventions

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Anchor lead: How does a global study of cancer inform public health? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Cancer diagnoses are up worldwide, by about a third, the Global Burden of Disease study finds. William Nelson, director of the Kimmel Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins, says there are big differences between countries on which cancers predominate.

Nelson: In the countries that have higher sociodemographic development and indices, they’ve been deploying screening, early detection, and if anything we’ve taken a while to get up to overdiagnosis and overtreatment- are we detecting cancers that aren’t very threatening, do we manage them correctly? So we’re on I think a good trajectory in the better developed counties, I think tragically what we’re seeing in the lesser developed countries is that you’re still seeing cancers that are uncommon in the developed countries. It tells you what you need to do to get those countries better off.    :30’

Nelson is confident that what he calls ‘legacy cancers’ such as cervical and liver cancer will be gotten under control soon worldwide. At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.