Report: More Americans Surviving Cancer
The most common cancers are killing fewer Americans. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has reported that the cancer death rate continues to fall.
- The CDC has issued its most recent annual report that chronicles U.S. cancer rates. It appeared in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute.
- Key causes of improvement: Fewer Americans are smoking. Plus, our market-based, consumer-centered health system delivers better and better cancer treatment.
- The steady improvements in fighting cancer started two decades ago.
- Modern medicine keeps getting better at screening and treating these diseases. The result is more American cancer survivors!
The numbers show that, in the war on cancer, we continue making progress.
- Deaths from cancer fell from 2000 to 2009 — for men, women and children.
- Mortality for men dropped in 10 of the 17 most common forms of cancer. Those include lung, colorectal, prostate, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, kidney, leukemia, stomach, myeloma, and oral and tracheal cancer.
- Fewer women died from lung, breast, ovarian, leukemia, colorectal, non-Hodgkin lymphoma, kidney, brain and nervous system cancers, myeloma, stomach, cervical, bladder, gallbladder, tracheal, oral and esophageal cancer.
- Over the past decade, 1.4 percent fewer women succumbed to cancer each year. Some 1.8 percent fewer men and 1.8 percent fewer children per year died from cancer.
- Over that period, men saw a 0.6 percent drop in new cancer diagnoses. Women’s cancer rate stayed even, while 0.6 percent more new cases were diagnosed in children.
Market-based healthcare has continually improved techniques for cancer screening and ways to treat the disease. This results in better quality of care, quality of life and potential health savings. But more progress is possible.
- “Our efforts in cancer prevention and control are working,” a CDC epidemiologist said.
- “The future is bright as long as we continue to apply what we know about cancer prevention, control and treatment,” a researcher at the American Cancer Society said.
- Wellness and healthier habits will have major roles in future progress. Getting exercise, better diets and reversing obesity together will influence the course of national cancer rates and deaths.
American healthcare’s fight against cancer is yielding positive results. Fewer Americans get cancer and die from it, with steady progress happening over the past two decades. The key moving forward involves our private-sector health system coming up with innovative treatments and detection procedures. As well, we must apply those techniques, and individuals must act on what we know about wellness and prevention.
