One person in India dies from cancer every 50 seconds. Hundreds of thousands more face surgery and years of treatment—driving a quarter of their households into poverty and making cancer the disease most likely to impoverish, according to the World Bank.Breast cancer is gaining in alarming ways. A decade ago, it moved ahead of oral cancer, in which India ranks No. 1 worldwide, to become the country’s fastest-growing malignant disease. India will lose $20 billion in economic output from 2012 to 2030 as a result of breast cancer, the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston projects.More than 115,000 new cases are diagnosed each year. The few treatment centers that track survival say 52% of breast cancer patients in India are alive after five years, a 2010 study published in The Lancet found. That pales in comparison with the 89% survival rate in the US and the 82% rate in China.In India, breast cancer typically strikes women at age 45 to 50—more than a decade earlier than in the West.Source: Livemint
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