We are rapidly expanding our understanding of cancer – how to prevent it, detect it, diagnose it, and treat it.
Global deaths from cancer, corrected for ageing, declined by 15% from 1990 to 2016.
Years of endeavor in research and development, improvements in public health, and efforts to change unhealthy behaviors may be starting to pay off.
However, across the Arab world, the number of people diagnosed with cancer is set to almost double by 2030, according to the World Health Organization.
Demographic change is at play here. Many of these countries have a simultaneously growing and ageing population – both of which account for an increase in cancer cases. It also does not help that rates of smoking and obesity, both major risk factors for cancer, are high in some of these countries.
While this paints a stark picture, there are practical actions we can take across the pathway of cancer screening, early detection and treatment to stay ahead of the disease and reduce its burden on our people and health systems down the line.
But we need a concerted effort, and no sole actor – be that government, healthcare provider or private sector innovator – can address this challenge alone.
In response, AstraZeneca and our partners and advisers from the global oncology community today will launch the Accelerating Change Together (ACT) for Cancer Care coalition at the Global Cancer Summit at Expo 2020 in Dubai.
Our aim is nothing short of revolutionizing the way people are being diagnosed and treated.
ACT for Cancer Care will galvanize health system changemakers, research pioneers and health innovators from the oncology community and beyond to advocate for greater investment in the early detection of cancer, the use of diagnostic tools and screening programs, and to facilitate education around, and access to, precision medicine.
Despite a seemingly unavoidable growth in cancer in our region, earlier diagnosis has the potential to arrest and perhaps even reverse this trend.
Take breast cancer – the most common cancer in the Arab world – five-year survival post detection increases from just 27% for those diagnosed with late-stage disease to 99% for those diagnosed at the earliest stage.
For colorectal cancer, we know that community-based screening is highly effective. Patients whose cancer is caught via colonoscopy are at a 67% reduced risk of death from their disease. This type of screening has already been deployed on a population-level in the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, but more countries need to follow suit.
After patients are identified, precision medicine -- an approach to treatment that takes into account an individual’s genes, environment and lifestyle -- can transform treatment and save lives.
But this can only happen at-scale if health systems are equipped with the required technologies. The inconsistent adoption of precision medicine has the potential to widen inequity among patients within the same country and in neighboring countries.
An example of this is in lung cancer, rates of which are increasing in many Arab countries. Routine adoption of the latest molecular profiling techniques in lung cancer can help match the right drug to right patient, but access to such techniques varies.
In conclusion, health systems must integrate early diagnosis and precision medicine into clinical guidelines, if they are to transform what a cancer diagnosis will mean for people affected by cancer, no matter who they are or where they live.
When taken together, the advances we need to see make for a huge task for all in the cancer community, but change is possible, if we act together.
