What if everybody around the world stopped their busy lives for just a minute and thought about cancer? That’s exactly what the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) hopes will happen today, World Cancer Day.
World Cancer Day — What It is
The UICC, a multinational non-profit organization founded in 1933, launched World Cancer Day at the First World Summit Against Cancer in 2000to raise awareness about the disease. The UICC’s ultimate goal is to eliminate cancers as life-threatening illnesses, but they have some work to do. Currently 7.6 million deaths (about 13 percent of all deaths) worldwide are caused by cancer or related complications.And as many as 30 percent of cancer deaths are due to preventable behaviors including smoking, obesity, and alcohol consumption. In 2010, theglobal cost of cancer — largely from productivity lost because of disability or premature death — was $290 billion. If we don’t change how we think about healthcare and sickness on an international level, that number is expected to swell to $458 billion by 2030 — with most of the bill falling on middle- and lower-income countries.
