The Sunday News
Lungile Tshuma Sunday News Correspondent
TOBACCO has been singled out as the major cause of cancer in the continent and Zimbabwe in particular, amid revelations that tobacco accounts for 30 percent of cancer-related deaths, a Government report reads.
According to the Ministry of Health and Child Care’s national cancer prevention and control strategy for 2014 to 2018 tobacco contains substances that can lead to several types of cancers.
“Tobacco contains approximately 4 000 chemicals of which at least 438 can lead to lung cancer. In addition to lung cancer, tobacco consumption increases the risk of cancer of the oral cavity, pancreas, esophagus, kidneys and bladder,” reads the report.
“For regular smokers, the relative risk of developing lung cancer is 20 times higher than that of non-smokers. People in Zimbabwe start smoking at a younger age, increasing the risk of developing cancer over the years.”
Some of the causes of cancer as outlined in the report include alcohol consumption which causes cancer of the oral cavity (cancer that starts in the mouth) and liver. Alcohol can also increase the risk of breast and colorectal cancers. Colorectal cancer is the cancer that starts in either the colon or the rectum.
The other cause was radiation, that is, ultraviolet radiation which comes from natural sunlight and other sources can lead to skin cancer that occurs more commonly in individuals who have little melanin pigment such as albinos and white skin race.
Infections are also included and they account of 22 percent of cancer deaths in developing countries and six percent in developed countries.
Some of the infections which are common in Zimbabwe include hepatitis B that causes primary liver cancer, hepatitis C, HIV and also human papillone virus (HPV) which causes cervical cancer.
This background comes at a time when more than 5 000 people are diagnosed with cancer annually in the country.
The leading cause of cancer related deaths among Zimbabwean men is prostate cancer followed by Kaposi sarcoma, non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL), eye, liver, stomach, non-melanoma skin cancer, lung and colon.
