Education and screening can prevent over 30pc cancer deaths - Health Minister

More than 30 per cent of cancer deaths can be prevented through effective education and screening saving thousands of lives a year in countries like Sri Lanka, Health Minister Nimal Siripala de Silva said.

He was speaking at a conference for professionals on caner treatment at the Centre for Cancer Research in Lyon, France yesterday.

“Cancer figures very high among our morbidity and mortality information in Sri Lanka. Cancer experts, health officials and other health personnel want to see increased emphasis on the early detection of cancer. Public awareness on cancer should be improved, so that patients can come forward and can be diagnosed earlier.

We also need to urgently improve the screening facilities to detect cancers at the early stage. We should strengthen cancer education and prevention campaigns conducted through the media. We need to establish preventive centres through the national cancer control programme,” the Minister said.

“While prevention and early detection will remain the backbone of our programme, we need to treat and manage the many who are regularly being diagnosed with different types of cancer. In this regard we recently installed a linear accelerator at the Cancer Hospital in Colombo. We will also undertake operational research to identify the types of cancers amenable to public health preventive measures,” the Minister said.

The Minister said our population today is 20 million and although we too experienced a population boom in the 1950s, through a highly successful family planning programme, we have been able to reduce the population growth rate to 1.2 per cent.

“Over the past few decades, Sri Lanka has achieved relatively high standards of social and health development compared to most countries in a similar state of economic development.

For example, even with a per capita income of around US $ 1,300 most of our health indicators are similar to the richer middle income countries. Our infant mortality is currently around 12 per 1,000 live births, maternal mortality is less than 40 per 100,000 live births, the life expectancy at birth for both sexes is around 73 years and we eradicated polio 15 years ago.

In spite of a conflict in one part of the country, our economy has been growing by over five per cent during the past decade. Of course these are very positive and we are happy about them,” Minister de Silva said.

He said yet at the same time, Sri Lanka has been experiencing an epidemiological transition.

Diseases such as cardiovascular and cerebro-vascular illnesses, diabetes, cancer, mental illness and injuries are now emerging more strongly in the morbidity and mortality patterns. Communicable diseases such as tuberculosis, dengue, Japanese encephalitis acute respiratory infections and diarrhoea, though much less than a decade ago, still persist, he said.

Tobacco and substance and alcohol abuse have increased in Sri Lanka over the past two or three decades.

“However, President Mahinda Rajapaksa is giving personal leadership to a new programme called Mathata Titha which translates into English as “Full Stop to Substance Abuse”, and already its helpful effects on preventing tobacco and alcohol abuse are clearly visible by reduced demand and sales.

Sri Lanka was the first country in our region and the fourth in the world to ratify the Framework Convention of Tobacco and Alcohol and we are implementing this very assiduously,” he said.