OPINION:ONE IN three people in Ireland will get cancer and there will be 42,000 new cases by 2020. We have one of the highest cancer rates in the world and the fourth highest cancer rate in Europe.
However, while more people are getting cancer, 55 per cent of people will survive it. More than 276,000 people are living with a cancer diagnosis in Ireland.
The high rate of cancer is due partly to an ageing population and the success of our cancer screening programmes, which have saved lives by catching cancers early.
Even though we are detecting more cancers, our risk of being diagnosed with cancer is influenced greatly by lifestyle choices. Smoking, obesity, alcohol consumption and low levels of physical activity are all contributing to the high rate of cancer.
We need to change our language around health. We shouldn’t be talking solely about our health services but about the health of our people. We need to acknowledge that as a country, Ireland is very unhealthy. Almost a quarter of our people smoke, 300,000 children are obese and up to 60 per cent of us are overweight. We need to invest in improving our health as a nation. If we don’t make this investment now it will be very difficult to meet the cost of diseases such as cancer, heart disease and diabetes, which in many cases are caused by lifestyle choices.
Preventable diseases are the leading cause of death. It is possible to bring down the rate of cancer by making some changes at both individual and government levels. We have made tremendous progress in diagnosing and treating cancer and now we need to focus on preventing it. We need to shift our thinking to prioritise health promotion and disease prevention once and for all.
Minister for Health James Reilly has spearheaded a major initiative aimed at improving the general standard of health. The major policy review, Your Health is Your Wealth, will inform care programmes, protect health, promote healthier lifestyles and improve our environment. The Irish Cancer Society believes the initiatives resulting from the policy framework will help drive down the cancer rate and lead to an enriched public health policy. We need to match this with changes in educational, economic and social policy.
Today the Irish Cancer Society hosts the World Cancer Leaders’ Summit in Dublin. The focus is on non-communicable diseases (NCDs) and specifically how to ensure fewer people develop cancer. Decision-makers from around the world are coming together to sign a “Dublin Resolution” that will build on the political declaration from September’s UN high-level meeting and that commits governments to take action to reduce the global burden of NCDs, including cancer.
The Dublin Resolution goes further, and seeks commitments from summit participants to reduce the number of preventable deaths from NCDs by a quarter by 2025.
Ambitious targets are critical to maintaining Ireland’s leadership role in cancer control. Although cancer places heavy pressures on our health services, the physical and emotional toll of living with this disease is considerable. By quitting smoking, reducing alcohol intake, being a healthy weight and eating well, we can all reduce our cancer risk by half.
The World Cancer Leaders’ Summit puts Ireland on the world stage again and gives us the opportunity to showcase our successes, while setting the agenda for the future. Ireland was a global leader in adopting anti-smoking legislation. We continue to lead the way through progressive initiatives driven by our National Cancer Control Programme under the HSE and the Department of Health.
The National Cancer Control Programme, headed by Dr Susan O’Reilly, is world-class and we now have eight designated cancer centres and one satellite centre. Rapid access diagnostic clinics for prostate cancer have been established in six centres and for lung cancer in all eight centres.
All breast cancer diagnostic and surgical services are delivered in the eight centres in addition to an outreach service in Letterkenny General Hospital.
CervicalCheck and BreastCheck are saving lives by providing vital screening to women so we detect cancer early. We need Government to stick to the timetable for the introduction of bowel cancer screening in 2012, which is Ireland’s first screening programme to include men. The Irish Cancer Society wants to save more lives by extending the age groups for screening.
One of the major contributors to cancer is smoking. Ireland was a leader in tobacco control when it introduced the workplace smoking ban in 2004, yet about one million people continue to smoke. Imagine the impact on our health services and the health of our people if we could change this.
The Irish Cancer Society is particularly concerned about the high rates of smoking among young women. Our most recent information from the Slán national health survey highlights that 56 per cent of disadvantaged women aged between 18 and 29 are smoking. Girls between 15 and 17 are twice as likely to smoke as their male peers.
It is of concern that despite our significant successes in other areas of cancer control, the tobacco industry continues to influence and manipulate young women. The World Cancer Leaders’ Summit reminds us that we need to constantly refresh and reinvigorate our strategies to reduce cancer incidence in Ireland. Some of our tobacco control strategies need to be improved, given the National Cancer Registry’s recent finding that more women are now dying from lung cancer than breast cancer.
Thirty per cent of all cancers and 95 per cent of lung cancers are caused by smoking. These cancers are largely preventable, so if the Government is serious about cutting the cancer rate, the number of people who smoke needs to be reduced. We can achieve this by raising the price of tobacco, investing in anti-smuggling initiatives and supporting the 75 per cent of smokers who want to quit. This will reduce the number of our young people smoking.
Cancer must remain a priority. The World Cancer Leaders’ Summit has put Ireland on a global stage. We now need to seize the opportunity to build on today’s momentum and do everything we can to reduce our cancer risk at a global, national and individual level.
John McCormack is chief executive of the Irish Cancer Society. For more information visit cancer.ie