Oral Cancer: April 2012

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Tobacco's the biggest cause of cancers in India

Tobacco is addictive, causes cancer and is killing nearly 1.2 lakh young Indians. Two major studies were released in the past week. A study in the Lancet, and the World Tobacco Atlas both found that tobacco use is the single biggest cause of cancers in India, resulting in 40 per cent of cancer deaths in Indian men.

Eighty per cent of all oral cancers are tobacco-related, according to the World Tobacco Atlas, released by world lung foundation. The Lancet study highlighted six lakh deaths due to cancer, in 2010.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

MP becomes 1st state to ban Gutka products containing tobacco

With increasing number of mouth cancer cases in the country, Madhya Pradesh has become the first state to ban all Gutka products which contain tobacco or nicotine under a new law governing food safety standards.

The Madhya Pradesh food secretary has issued instructions to all District Collectors and Food Safety officials to ensure that the sale and manufacture of all Ghutka products in their areas is not allowed and all such material containing tobacco and nicotine be confiscated.

The ban came into effect from April 1.

The state food secretary has also called for initiating action under the rules against all those indulging in sale and manufacture of Gutka products containing Tobacco and Nicotine.

Madhya Pradesh is the first state to ban Gutka under the Food Safety and Standards (Prohibition & Restrictions on sales) Regulation 2011 notified by the Food Safety & Standards Authority of India (FSSAI).

Tobacco major cause of cancer deaths: Study

Health experts in Kerala are hoping that a nationwide cancer mortality study which underscores the massive health burden of tobacco will galvanise the state and central governments into action and prevent hundreds of thousands of avoidable deaths every year.

Tobacco use is estimated to have caused nearly 120,000 deaths across India in 2010, according to research carried out by the Toronto-based Centre for Global Health Research (CGHR) in partnership with Mumbai's Tata Memorial Hospital.

Nearly 600,000 Indians die of cancer every year - over seven in 10 deaths (71 percent) takes place in the 30-69 age group, the most productive period of a person's life, says the report published in the latest issue of the Lancet medical journal.
Read more.....
http://www.dailypioneer.com/home/online-channel/health-a-fitness/54769-tobacco-major-cause-of-cancer-deaths-study.html

Monday, April 2, 2012

More than 50% cancers preventable

More than half of all cancer is preventable and society possesses the requisite knowledge to act on this information, says a new study.

Investigators from the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, have outlined obstacles that stand in the way of making a huge dent in the cancer burden in the US and around the world.

"We actually have an enormous amount of data about the causes and preventability of cancer," said epidemiologist Graham A Colditz, at the Washington School of Medicine, the journal Science Translational Medicine reported.