Nine factors to saving lives
A recent global analysis of the behavioural and environmental causes of cancer has found that huge numbers of lives could be saved each year if just nine factors were tacked successfully.
These were; smoking, alcohol, overweight and obesity, poor fruit and vegetable intake, unsafe sex, physical inactivity, urban and indoor air pollution and contaminated injections in hospitals and clinics.
Of the seven million deaths from cancer each year, over 2.4 million are linked to one or more of these risk factors and therefore in theory are preventable.
Up to seven million lives could be saved each year just from controlling smoking and alcohol.
A quarter of a million could be saved from unsafe sex causing cervical cancer through infection with the human papilloma virus (HPV).
