Photo from Jinghua.cn

Sixteen departments including National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) have jointly developed a three-year action plan for cancer prevention and control (2015-2017), according to a report of People’s Daily Online.

The plan set out six specific objectives which will be achieved by 2017.

1) To establish the national and provincial leadership and a coordination mechanism for cancer prevention and control.

2) To improve the institutional capacity of the national cancer center, and to enhance the management of comprehensive cancer control service in all regions.

3) To further standardize the registration system of tumors which covers more than 30 percent of the national population, and draw a national cancer map based on the national and provincial cancer incidence and mortality.

4) To make 60 percent of the popularization know about the core knowledge about cancer prevention and control and reduce the adult smoking rate by 3 percent.

4) To expand the coverage of cancer detection and treatment, and increase the early detection rate in key regions and key cancers to 50 percent.

6) To gradually increase 5-year survival rate and reduce mortality for key cancers.

The cancer prevention and control situation is still grim with about 3.1 million new cases of cancer and about 2 million deaths due to cancer per year in China. In the past 20 years, China's incidence of cancer had increased year by year. Carcinogenic factors include chronic infection, unhealthy lifestyles, environmental pollution and occupational exposure.

With the acceleration of the aging process, cancer incidence and mortality rates in China will continue to rise. It can lead to a heavy economic burden on national, social and personal levels.