Cancer appears to be most deadly disease in Bangladesh: experts

Paediatric oncologists and experts said awareness, preventive measures and early diagnosis can save lives of thousands of children from cancer in the country.
They made the observation at a childhood cancer awareness campaign and art competition by children afflicted with various cancers at Dhaka Medical College and Hospital on Thursday.
The experts said poor diagnosis, mostly by low number of specially trained healthcare professionals and superstitions that childhood cancer is too difficult to cure are responsible for high child mortality.
They also said childhood cancer, in fact, can be cured even in resource-poor countries and that more than half of the child patients’ malignancies could easily be treated with relatively simple and inexpensive drugs and procedures.
They feared that cancer is appearing to be an important cause of deaths in Bangladesh in the next few decades. They said there are 1.3 to 1.5 million cancer patients in Bangladesh, with about 200,000 patients being newly diagnosed with the deadly disease every year.
According to International Agency for Research on Cancer, deaths from these terminal diseases in Bangladesh were 7.5 per cent in 2005 and it may go to as high as 13 per cent in 2030.
Dhaka Medical College and Hospital director brigadier general Md Mizanur Rahman, DMC head of Paediatric surgery department Prof Dr Ashraful Huq Kazol and head of Paediatric hematology and oncology department Dr AKM Amirul Morshed Khasru and World Child Cancer Programme coordinator for Bangladesh Rizwana Hussain spoke on the occasion.
Mizanur Rahman called for raising awareness about childhood cancer among the people and said lives of many children could be saved simply through building awareness and early diagnosis.
International organisation World Child Cancer and Dhaka Medical College and Hospital jointly organised the campaign under a UK Aid-funded project.
As part of the awareness campaign, children with cancer joined an art competition held in Paediatric Hematology and Oncology Ward of the hospital.

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