12 million!
12,000,000 new cases of cancer will be diagnosed this year throughout the world!
Sixty percent of all cancer is preventable. One-third can be cured if detected early and treated adequately.
By 2030, there COULD be 27 million incident cases of cancer, 17 million cancer deaths annually and 75 million persons alive with cancer within five years of diagnosis.
The National Cancer Insitute’s total budget for Fiscal Year 2005 was $4.83 billion. The NCI invested an estimated $4.79 billion during Fiscal Year 2006. The budget was decreased to $4.75 billion in Fiscal Year 2007. 2008 and 2009 fiscal packages for the NCI were decreased as well.
After years of hampered efforts in US Government spending and research, 2010 will be a different story, with an additional $1 Billion set aside for research, prevention and screening in the 2009 stimulus package. The proposed increase in funding for medical research at the National Institutes of Health and the National Cancer Institute will make a big difference in the effort to fight cancer after years of flat or cut federal funding for medical research. Stem cell research will also be reopened to a broader range of options, finally being monitored and controlled through scientific standards rather than one groups moral values. The war on cancer steps up, and those 2030 numbers could look much different.
Aside from national funding, groups around the world have step up their fights. Tobacco control and prevention has made great gains around the world and we expect a very different priority from the Obama administration. Research, prevention, screening and survivorship are top priorities in the funding goals of the Lance Armstrong Foundation. LAF last year awarded over $3 million in grants to research, patient care, centers of excellence. It also provided support to over 6,500 newly diagnosed patients and their supporters, providing a new look at surviorship and life to hundreds of thousands of people. I for one am one of them…
