OpinionOpinion
Cancer affects everyone and represents a huge burden for patients, families and the entire society, the magnitude of the problem is global. The World Health Organization mentions that the five types of cancer that cause the highest number of deaths are: Pulmonary with 1.69 million deaths, Hepatic 788,000. Colorectal 774,000. Breast 571,000 and Gastric with 754,000 deaths. The Pan American Health Organization reports for the Americas region that in 2005 approximately 1.15 million people died of cancer and 480,000 of the cases were from Latin America and the Caribbean. By 2030 it is projected that more than 1.6 million deaths will be from cancer. The majority of men’s cancer deaths in Latin America and the Caribbean occur as a consequence of prostate cancer, followed by lung, stomach and colorectal cancer. Among women, the highest mortality is due to breast cancer, and later to stomach, lung, cervical and colorectal cancer. Each year in the Americas region, more than 462,000 women are diagnosed with breast cancer, and nearly 100,000 die from this disease.If current trends continue, by 2030, the number of women diagnosed with breast cancer is projected to increase by 34%. As for prostate cancer, it is the most common cancer in men, with about 413,000 new cases and 85,000 deaths each year.
Regarding cervical cancer, in 2018, more than 72,000 women were diagnosed and almost 34,000 died of this disease in the Region of the Americas. We can mention many data and trends on cancer, but while it is true that there are many causes for which a person can have cancer and that the health systems of countries are inefficient to prevent cancer in the face of many causes such as pollution of the air, water, land, food, etc., it is also true that a responsibility of health systems should be to detect cancer in time and thus reduce the years of life potentially lost, that is, that people die as close as possible at the age called life expectancy. Giving these people a few more years of life but also with quality of life, this not only benefits people, but also for health systems, since the costs of care for the early stages of cancer are cheaper than late stage treatments. For this, the countries must intensify their screening and in some types of cancer such as cervical and breast cancer, perform them at an early age, see the problem from the point of view of complexity and not with a reductionist vision, for example; The culture of the countries has changed, women and men have sexual relations at a very early age and some adolescents even use contraceptives, if to that we add the hormones that are administered in some cases to animals so that they develop quickly for their consumption , the risk is higher.
For example, in a study in Mexico (mortality from prostate and cervical cancer, years lost and costs of the programs. Mexico 2013- 2016. Medical Gazette of Mexico) 453,840 years were lost in women due to breast cancer, 1,653 years in men due to cancer breast cancer, 365,677 years in women for cervical cancer and 25,685 years in men for prostate cancer, however the two main health institutions spent from 2013 to 2016 on prevention programs against breast and cervical cancer just over two thousand million Mexican pesos, approximately more than 100 million dollars, which should have an effect on reducing the years of life lost, however this is not the case because the study shows that the years of life lost have an upward trend.The health systems of the countries must be efficient in spending their budget, this must have repercussions for the benefit of their citizens and not only carry out programs to do so, more operational research must be done to demonstrate the efficiency of the programs and not measure the cancer prevention programs on targets for the number of screenings to be done.
