Vietnam stands the 18th among countries with the highest rates of gastric cancer in the world, and most of gastric cancer patients in Vietnam are late diagnosed.
The information was recently given by Associate. Prof. Dr. Nguyen Truong Khanh, head of Gastroenterology Department at Bach Mai Hospital at an International Symposium on liver and gallbladder digestion in Hanoi.
According to Khanh, a high salt intake, staying up late, sedentary lifestyle and HP bacteria infections were the main reasons for gastric cancer rise in Vietnam.
“We are working to provide statistics on Vietnamese people who face the risk of gastric cancer. The best method for the early detection of the disease is endoscopy,” Khanh said.
Professor Hidemi Goto from Nagoya University said that over the past years, experts from the university have helped Bach Mai Hospital with the transfer of endoscopic and surgical techniques to treat gastrointestinal cancer, while many doctors of Bach Mai Hospital have been sent to Japan to gain experience in this area.
In Japan, most of patients with gastric cancer are diagnosed early so the treatment is quite effective. Meanwhile, in Vietnam, the disease diagnosis is often late, affecting the treatment efficiency. That is why gastric cancer patients in Vietnam have to use operations or chemotherapy.
Vietnam sees around 126,000 new cancer patients and 94,000 cancer deaths per year, up to nine times higher than the number of traffic accident-caused fatalities.
Early cancer diagnosis treatment fees are not covered by health insurance. In the coming time, the fees for some kinds of cancer such as breast, live and digestive cancers will be paid by health insurance.
Source: Dtinews
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