GINA | GOVERNMENT INFORMATION AGENCY

Cancer mortality in Guyana

A GINA release, March 3, 2004

The Guyana Cancer Society (GCS) has revealed that the morality rate for cancer patients is approximately 60 percent.
The study was done with more than 1,000 cancer patients diagnosed between 2002 and 2003 and shows that six out of ten have died from the disease.
Chief Medical Officer, Rudolph Cummings in an interview with the Government Information Agency said that to lower the mortality rate, persons have to become aware of the disease at an early stage.
He noted that effective screening process and technical personnel are some factors that the Ministry of Health has to look into to discover the disease early.
Cummings said that once a person is between the ages of 30 – 40, he should have a screening test every two years and over 40, annually.
He noted that most people come to the Ministry, when the cancer is in a late stage.
Cancer develops when cells in a certain region begin to grow out of control. Although there are many kinds of cancer, they all start because of out-of-control growth of once abnormal cells.
Normal body cells grow, divide, and terminate in an orderly fashion. During the early years of a person's life, normal cells divide more rapidly until the person becomes an adult. After that, cells in most parts of the body divide only to replace worn-out cells and to repair injuries.
Cancer cells develop because of damage to DNA. This substance is in every cell and directs all its activities. Most of the time when DNA becomes damaged, either the cell terminates or is able to repair the DNA.
In cancer cells, the damaged DNA is not repaired. People can inherit damaged DNA, which accounts for inherited cancers. Many times though, a person’s DNA becomes damaged by exposure to something in the environment, like smoking.
Cancer usually forms as a tumor. Some cancers, like leukemia, do not form tumors. Instead, these cancer cells involve the blood and blood-forming organs, and circulate through other tissues where they grow. Cancer cells often travel to other parts where they begin to grow and replace normal tissue.
This process, called metastasis, occurs as the cancer cells get into the bloodstream or lymph vessels of our body. When cells from a cancer, such as breast cancer, spread to another organ like the liver, the cancer is still called breast cancer, not liver cancer.
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