All You Need To Know About World Cancer Day

February 4 marks the occasion of World Cancer Day. A day marked especially for the purpose of raising awareness about cancer, a disease which has killed millions people all across the world. In fact, there are some researches that mention that number of cancer deaths can increase by 13.2 million in a year by 2030. In times when as many as 8.8 million people die every year, and half of them aged between 30 and 69 die prematurely, spreading the word about cancer awareness and educating people about it becomes extremely important.

Here's all you need to know about the significance of cancer day and why it is celebrated:

1. The initiative of world cancer day is lead by the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC). The organisation further invites other institutes, organisations and communities who feel sensitive about cancer, so that they can educate people about cancer and also discuss cancer survivors at length.

2. Cancer is neither rare nor is restricted to only developed or high-resource countries of the world. Back in 2012, it was found that most of the cancers were reported from the lesser developed regions of the world. And if left unchecked, these numbers are further expected to rise by 2025. With limited resources allocated to health and technology for treatment getting more expensive every day, many people do not have access to proper and efficient treatment for cancer.

3. There is definitely a need to focus more on cancer prevention rather than treatment. Experts say that there is a need for a balanced approach to prevention, ability to detect cancer at an early stage, and proper and efficient treatment. Research has indicated increased incidence of cancer because of increased diagnosis, change in reproductive history, lifestyle habits and ageing. A lot of efforts are required for cancer prevention.

4. Beyond cancer prevention and treatment, there is a strong need to promote changes in lifestyle among people. There needs to be more awareness among people about the lifestyle habits that can cause cancer, such as smoking, alcohol consumption and consuming cancerous foods. People need to actively adopt changes in their diet and lifestyle in order to prevent cancer.

Thus, this world cancer day, let us thrive for the world to be a healthy and cancer-free place to live in.