• Submitted by: manso
• Society
• 12 / 08 / 2010

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2010.12.07 - 15:11:04 / [email protected]. Havana, Cuba.- Prestigious personalities and academicians from the Americas and Europe are meeting as of Tuesday in Havana in a Forum on Cancer to share experiences and new methods to control this disease.  

Several activities have been scheduled within the program of the event such as, for example, the Fifth National and the First Regional Workshops on Cancer, the International Seminar and the National Workshop on the use and development of isotopic products for health, on the occasion of the 15th anniversary of Havana’s Center of Isotopes.

Assessing the strategy for cancer control in Cuba; presenting a plan of action for 2011; and exchanging experiences on the use, development and sustainability of radiopharmaceuticals, are among the topics to be discussed during the meeting.

Other topics include the training of human resources, quality of life, cancer control and prevention, radionuclide therapy, nuclear and molecular imaging, production of isotopes and radiopharmaceuticals, and other activities of the kind.

The director of the National Unit for Cancer Control and also president of the event’s organizing committee, Doctor Teresa Romero, announced that the forum will also deal with the use of biotechnology products and the role of Social Sciences in the control of this disease.

Romero added that cancer has become, since 1970, the second cause of death in Cuba —only behind cardiovascular diseases— with the highest impact on life expectancy at birth, and noted that in 2009 alone more than 21,000 people died of cancer.

She also pointed out that it is already the main cause of death in eight Cuban provinces: Havana, Villa Clara, Sancti Spiritus, Cienfuegos, Las Tunas, Granma, Santiago de Cuba and Guantanamo, and in the Isle of Youth Special Municipality.

Romero mentioned that, despite control actions, the incidence and mortality rates continue to increase.

Experts on cancer insist on early prevention and detection given that a third of all malignant tumors are curable if treated on their early stages.

Source: ACN