NEW DELHI: The incidence of cervical cancer is less among Muslim women, than among women from other communities, a research paper by a leading oncologist has said. Professor of Medicine Haematology and Oncology Arun Seth from St John's Medical College Hospital in Bangalore, south Central India presented a paper on cancer mortality in the country, in which he also says that the country suffers six hundred thousand cancer deaths annually. “About 6-lakh (hundred thousand) patients suffer and succumb to cancer in India annually. Men are more prone to cancer than women. Men suffer from oral, lung and stomach cancer. Women mostly suffer from cervical and breast cancer. I found that tobacco related caner and cervical cancer are the major causes of death among the working population,” he said. He however did not say why the Muslim women were less susceptible to cervical cancers. The government is already concerned with the increasing cases of cancers, especially in the hilly states lying at the foothills of the Himalayas, in which a great percentage of populace tends to smoke and smoke more frequently. Cancer is one of the deadly killers of India, especially with many of the cases being detected only when the disease is at an advanced stage. Inability to detect cancers in rural areas, where the bulk of the population lives as well as poor awareness of the disease are blamed by many oncologists in the state. Cancer treatment is available only in the big metropolitan cities of the country and mainly at private medical centers, the treatment of which is out of reach for the rural poor.
