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Cancer strikes more the poor, who also have less access to care: scientists have published a report on social inequalities in the face of the disease, suggesting ways to reduce it.
This publication of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), based on the expertise of more than 70 international scientists from diverse disciplines, highlights the important variations cancer incidence, patient survival and mortality inequality between different countries and, inside these, between different social categories.
The cancer "touch everyone but he hits harder disadvantaged people", says Dr. Salvatore Vaccarella, coordinator of this study and researcher at IARC, the World Health Organization's cancer agency.
Social inequalities increase the probability of developing cancer but also have an impact on screening, early diagnosis and access to treatment, including palliative care, recalls IARC.
Among the most disadvantaged, the risk factors for the most common cancers are generally related to infections, unhealthy diets, excessive consumption of alcohol or tobacco. In the United States, 30% of men below the poverty line smoked in 2014, a proportion that was reduced to 18% above this threshold.
Overall, mortality rates for most cancers are higher in the socio-economically disadvantaged population, minorities and refugees.
In Colombia, poorly educated women with brain cancer have a death rate nearly five times higher than others. And in Australia, the all-cancer mortality rate is 30% higher in the indigenous community compared to the rest of the population.
Among the disparities between countries, less than 25% of the world's population has access to a quality surgery. Failing health systems can also increase inequalities in cancer.
Nevertheless, these last ones "are largely preventable, even if it requires concerted actions at many levels", says IARC.
Researchers advocate establishing new cancer registries and strengthening existing ones, addressing all stages of care against social inequalities in the face of the disease, and ideally reducing or eliminating them. increase prevention research.
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