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Lung cancer kills the most people in rural China
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LUNG cancer has emerged as the leading killer in rural China.
The disease claimed 66,100 rural lives last year, overtaking breast cancer as the third leading cause of cancer deaths in females in 2015, which killed 25,700 women.
“The incidence and mortality of lung cancer has dramatically climbed in China’s rural population over the past 10 years,” said surgical oncology professor Zhou Qinghua. “The rates for each have hit 47.6/100,000 and 39.1/100,000 respectively in 2015.”
Speaking at the first West China International Conference on Lung Cancer recently held in Chengdu, Sichuan, Zhou noted that esophageal carcinoma that had been blamed for cancer deaths in rural China due to low fruit and fresh vegetable intake from the 1970s to the 1990s.
A well-established surgeon, Zhou receives as many as 1,000 lung cancer patients a year from across the country, nearly half of them are farmers.
“The youngest patient I saw was a 13-year-old country girl from Sichuan, and a 14 country boy from Yunnan. The oldest one was a 91-year-old rural grandpa.”
The old man had smoked most of his life, and his cancer was already in its late stages when detected. “But the 13 and 14-year-old didn’t smoke at all and had no family history of cancer. I deeply doubted that involuntary smoking and air pollution combined could be responsible,” Zhou said.
In fact, Ge Jiu, the young boy’s home county, is notorious for tin mining-related pollution that has brought about silicosis deaths affecting a huge number of people. Passive smoke and indoor air pollution are mainly responsible for the incidence of lung cancer in Chinese farmers, especially in those high-risk areas like Xuanwei County of Yunnan.
Dr Qiao Youlin, an acclaimed epidemiologist of oncology noted that people of Xuanwei had lived in unhealthy conditions for generations.
Most were still using firepits or coal ovens for cooking and heating. These released heavy PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) that created indoor air pollution.
The figures from the National Cancer Center suggest that the incidence and mortality rate of lung cancer in Xuanwei are two times higher than the country’s average rate of 53.4/100,000 and 44.4/100,000 in 2015.
This disease was difficult to detect in its early stages, so most lung cancer cases were found during the late stages, said Zhou, who is also the director of Cancer Center & Institute of West China Hospital of Sichuan University. According to Zhou, the overall 5-year survival rate for lung cancer as of 2015 stood at 16.7 percent.
The exact cause of lung cancer is still unknown, making the disease difficult to curb. But certain risk factors for lung cancer, include smoking, exposure to air pollution, radon gas, and genetics, are scientifically known to play a part in causing cells to become cancerous.
About 75 percent of lung cancer cases in men in China are due to long-term smoking, but most of female lung cancer is not put down to smoking.
In the case of rural China, second-hand smoking and indoor air pollution play a dominate role in lung cancer. Dr Qiao thinks that a lack of awareness about the effects of tobacco smoking as a leading risk factor for lung cancer puts rural people’s health in jeopardy.
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