Cancer has gradually become a national public health challenge that affected on average 12,000 Chinese and killed 7,500 every day last year, according to a new report.
There were an estimated 4.3 million new cancer diagnoses in the country last year and 2.8 million deaths, researchers said in the report CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, published on behalf of the American Cancer Society.
In 2012, when figures were last released, there were an estimated 3.12 million new diagnoses and 2.7 million deaths.
The latest report was led by Chen Wanqing, director of the Chinese National Central Cancer Registry at the National Health and Family Planning Commission. It was based on data from 72 local cancer registries between 2009 and 2011, representing 6.5 percent of the population.
Chen said cancer cases are expected to continue rising in China, citing increased environmental risk factors such as smoking, infections and exposure to water and air pollution.
Smoking led to more than 20 percent of the preventable cancer cases in China and accounted for 25 percent of all cancer deaths, the report said.
The most prevalent forms were lung, stomach, liver and esophageal cancers, accounting for 57 percent of the total.
The most common forms affecting men were lung, stomach, esophageal, liver and colorectal cancers. Among women, breast cancer was the most prevalent, accounting for 15 percent of new cases, followed by lung, stomach, colorectal and esophageal cancers.
Worldwide, nearly 22 percent of the new cancer cases and 27 percent of the deaths occurred in China, according to the World Health Organization.
Bernhard Schwartländer, the WHO representative in China, said preventable cancers account for nearly 60 percent of the nation's cases.
Many of the cases are linked to unhealthy lifestyles, he said, urging the Chinese government to recognize the challenge and intervene — "primarily with smoking controls."
But mortality rates in China have dropped by about 21 percent annually for both men and women since 2006, according to the report. However, total cancer deaths increased by 74 percent during the same period, the report said.
Regionally, the highest death rate from cancer was recorded in Southwest China, followed by North China.
Chen said the survival rate is much lower in China compared with Western countries, citing a poor early detection rate domestically.
In China, 29 percent of cancer deaths were related to chronic infections such as Helicobacter pylori, a bacterium usually found in the stomach, hepatitis B infections that caused liver cancer, and the human papillomavirus that caused cervical cancer, the report said.
Chen said the more people the registry could cover, the more accurately the spread of cancer could be understood.
"That will help the authorities to design evidence-based and more-targeted intervention programs," he said.
The registry is expected to include 40 percent of China's population of 1.36 billion by 2020.
