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One in three men and one in four women get cancer throughout their lives and half of them overcome the disease, according to cancer statistics for 2003 to 2005 and the five-year survival rate of cancer patients released on Wednesday by the Korea Central Cancer Registry under the Ministry for Health, Welfare and Family Affairs.
The total incidence of cancer from 2003 to 2005 was 398,824, with an annual average of 132,941. The annual average for men and women was 72,952 and 59,989, respectively. The risk of cancer for men was 29.6 percent and for women 25.5 percent in 2005.
But the five-year survival rate of cancer patients exceeded 50 percent for the first time. Between 2001 and 2005 it was 52.2 percent, a whopping 11 percent point jump from 41.2 percent between 1993 and 1995.
The five-year survival rate for five cancers (gastric, liver, colorectal, cervical, and breast cancer) for which the government is trying to promote early testing jumped by 10.6 percent point from 45.7 percent to 56.3 percent. Doctors view five-year survival as a full recovery.
Park Eun-cheol, a director of national cancer control programs, said a rising awareness of early diagnosis along with medical improvements gives cancer patients hope that they are 50 percent likely to survive.
But a growing number of women are attacked by cancer. The incidence for women in 2005 was 65,044, a 49.7 percent increase from 43,438 in 1999. For men over the same period, the incidence rose by 34.7 percent, from 57,594 to 77,566.
The most common form was gastric cancer (18.3 percent, 72,872 cases), followed by lung cancer (12.1 percent), colorectal cancer (12 percent), liver cancer (10.9 percent), thyroid cancer (7.6 percent), breast cancer (6.8 percent), and cervical cancer (3 percent).
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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