Popular Science News | 1.5 million Cancer Deaths the Result of Easily Curable Infections

According to the statistics from 2008 worldwide cancer deaths, 20% of them were preventable. These cancers have been linked to four main infections including human papillomaviruses (HPV), Helicobacter pylori, and hepatitis B (HBV) and hepatitis C viruses (HCV).  These bacterial and viral infections lead to gastric, liver and cervical cancers. In women, cervical cancer accounted for 50% of the infection-related cancers and in men, liver and gastric cancers accounted for 80% of the infection-related cancers.

These cancers do not appear after just a single infection but take 10 or more years to develop as a result of recurring chronic infections. However, if the infections were properly treated at an early stage then the likelihood of cancer is greatly reduced. As always it is those people who have limited access to this early treatment who are affected and unsurprisingly the greatest incidence of infection related cancers are in countries with underdeveloped Health Services.
33% of cancers in sub-Saharan Africa were infection-related, whereas only 4 percent of cancers in North America were due to infection. With only 3.3%, Australia and New Zealand had the lowest proportion of infection-related cancers.
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