A third of cancer patients in China survive: report

Roughly 30 out of every 100 cancer patients in China survive five years after their diagnosis, while the country has witnessed increasing cancer rates and deaths in recent years, said a recent report on cancer mortality in China published by the National Office for Cancer Prevention and Control in the International Journal of Cancer.

The report found that the five-year relative survival rate for all cancers in China was 30.9 percent, while the survival rate for rural patients was about half that of their urban counterparts.

The center collected 139,000 cancer cases from 17 registries diagnosed in 2003-2005 and followed them until the end of 2010.

"The disparity between the [survival] rates in developed countries and China remained enormous. For example, the rate in the US stayed steady at 70 percent," Zhang Siwei, an associate professor of National Cancer Registration Center, told news portal caixin.com.

One reason for the discrepancy is in the type of cancer which occurs more frequently in different countries, according to the report.

Most new cancer cases and deaths in China are from liver, oesophagus, stomach and lung cancer, according to a latest World Cancer Report issued by the World Health Organization in 2014. "It is partly due to bad health habits and relatively low living standards, including the unclean food and white spirits Chinese prefer," Zhou Liqiang, a professor of Beijing-based Cancer Institute & Hospital, told the Global Times.

The most common cancer types in the US are breast and prostate cancer, according to the statistics offered by the US National Cancer Institute.

"Those two cancers are more easily treated. If we only look at those two types of cancer, survival rates in the US are likely to be similar to China," Zhou said. Zhang said the lower rate is also because China lags behind developed countries in terms of medical treatment level and scientific research.

However, Zhou said that despite lagging behind in scientific research, China's clinical performance is impressive, even better than the US, as American doctors tend to rigidly follow the NCCN Clinical Practice Guidelines in Oncology laid down by the US National Comprehensive Cancer Network, and are not inclined to try new therapies.

The report also revealed that the survival rate for rural patients was only 21.8 percent, about half of urban patients, whose survival rate was 39.5 percent.

The poor quality of cancer care and limited access to healthcare for patients in rural areas are likely to be important contributors, the report said.