While incidence of oral cavity cancer has significantly declined in Goa in recent years with a decline in tobacco chewing and smoking, the incidence of breast cancer among young woman is growing alarmingly, warned Cancer Surgeaon Shekhar Salkar, General Secretary, The Goa Cancer Society(GCS) warned here on Monday.
GCS is a non-profit organization headed by Goa’s industrialist Srinivas Dempo, which works for prevention and cure of cancer.
Dr. Salkar who is also associated with the Oncology Department of Manipal Hospitals, Goa said Goa gets 200 fresh detections of breast cancer every year, considered very high for less than 15 lakh of population (50 per cent of that being women). At all India level, 80,000 new cases of breast cancer are detected every year.
“Only good thing what I find is that the awareness is also on rise in Goa, as a result of which mercifully, maximum cases of breast cancer today come for treatment at stage 1 or stage 2 unlike in 1990s when more than 75 per cent cases would be in the final stage, said Dr. Salkar.
He suggested that women must start check-up after the age of 30 years as a preventive measure, considering the high incidence of breast cancer among younger women.
Dr. Salkar who has been spearheading the cause of anti-tobacco under the banner of National Organisation for Tobacco Eradication (NOTE),India as its honorary secretary for several years said that NOTE’s surveys have made it clear that tobacco consumption has gone down in Goa in recent years( 8 per cent). As a result of this, he said, oral cavity cancer has gone down to 22 per cent in Goa as against 45 per cent at all Indian level.
Replying to a question, Dr. Salkar said that fast changing life-style, late marriages among women in Goa were some of the causes of high incidence and went on to promote breast-feeding as one of the preventive measures.
Emphasising on early detection, Dr. Salkar said, “My worry is younger population. Early detection is important for total cure.” He said that increasing life span is also to some extent responsible for higher cancer incidence. He pointed out that way back in 1947, life span for males\females was 57\ 47 whereas today it has shot up to 72\67, respectively. Higher the life span more the chances of people getting cancer, he said.
Earlier, Mr. Dempo announced that with the reasonably good increase in the Corpus of the GCS, it has decided to spend around Rs.25 lakhs on financial schemes, cancer research, lectures and cancer detection camps.
