Cancer fund campaign still hopeful despite economic woes

Mortality rates for certain cancers in Israel seen dropping.

By JUDY SIEGEL-ITZKOVICH
Hospital 88,248 GENERIC good image (photo credit: )
Hospital 88,248 GENERIC good image
(photo credit: )
The Israel Cancer Association is hoping the looming threat of recession won't hurt its upcoming Knock on the Door campaign, which aims to raise at least NIS 10 million. Miri Ziv, the director-general of the ICA, the educational campaigns, medical equipment purchases and research promotion of which have helped reduce the rates of several types of cancer - called on the public Wednesday to donate generously on Monday, October 27, when tens of thousands of schoolchildren come knocking on their doors. The campaign will also be taking place in supermarkets and other public locations around the country, as well as by Internet and SMS. Last year, the high school strike that kept pupils out of classes adversely impacted the campaign, and the year before that the Second Lebanon War had had the same effect. The campaign is being chaired this year by Haim Katzman, chairman of the Gazit-Globe company, who said that even during these troubled economic times it was important for business people and the general public to be generous, as "the economic situation does not minimize the need for contributions" to the fight against cancer. "Cancer patients cannot wait until the economic situation improves," he stressed at an ICA press conference in Tel Aviv. ICA chairman Prof. Eliezer Robinson said that worldwide, some seven million people a year die from cancer, and that this figure was liable to rise to 12 million by 2030 - a figure higher than the death toll from AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria combined - unless more was done to prevent and treat the disease. In Israel, however, there are signs that mortality rates for certain cancers are dropping somewhat, especially lung (due to the reduction in the smoking rate to 23 percent), breast (resulting from more mammograms, early detection and improved treatment) and colorectal cancer (due to early diagnosis with colonoscopy and the sampling of occult blood in the feces). Cancer Registry head Dr. Michal Barchana and Ziv said they hoped rates of other types of cancer would begin to fall as well. Prof. Gad Rennert, head of the national program for early diagnosis of breast cancer, said that 371,000 women (mostly over 50, but women from high-risk families start earlier) had had mammograms last year, with 38,000 of them having been performed in the mobile ICA vans serving the outlying parts of the country, as well as sectors with lower rates of breast scans. In addition, younger women with a higher hereditary risk of breast cancer are undergoing MRI scans to detect it at an early stage. A new study, said Rennert, shows that statins - prescription drugs that reduce blood cholesterol - have been proven to reduce the risk of breast, prostate, lung and colorectal cancers. The risk of breast cancer was found to be 25% lower in women taking statins than in those who weren't. Rennert called the findings of the study, which was carried out in northern Israel over the past five years, "very significant." Fully 82.2% of Israelis polled said they believe that cancer patients have a chance of being cured. Only 18.2% of Israelis thought cancer meant inevitable death, while over 70% believed that it could be prevented by a healthy lifestyle. Three years ago, those opinions were 23% and 66% respectively. Ziv said that while the situation relating to knowledge about cancer had improved, unfortunately there were still some mistaken views prevalent among the public. "We held an educational campaign about it this year and hope such efforts will lead to more healthful lifestyles," she said.