TODAY marks World Cancer Day (WCD) – a platform to create cancer awareness by sharing knowledge on how to lower your cancer risk.
According to CANSA’s report in South Africa (SA) cancer was under reported due to the lack of a comprehensive cancer surveillance system.
The latest Stats SA figures show a steady increase in deaths attributable to cancer from 5.6% in 2006 to 9.1% in 2015.
Approximately 8.2 million people die from cancer worldwide every year of which 4 million of these deaths are premature from age 30 to 69 years.
Cancer deaths predictions are expected to increase to over 14 million per year, globally, over the next 10 years.
The three year theme, “I Can. We Can” concludes in 2018, with the focus being on “Inspiring healthy communities.”
CANSA urges everyone to be more active in every sense in the fight against cancer by incorporating sport-related and wellness activities into daily routines.
Physical activity has been shown to combat cancer, including: lowering cancer risk, and helping cancer patients manage the side-effects of treatment such as fatigue, depression and heart damage.
The impact you could make through your family, local school, library, health practitioners, sports clubs, organisations, workplace and social media platforms to get the message out there, could potentially save lives.