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Unhealthy lifestyles blamed for rising rates of breast cancer among urban Chinese women
1 November 2007
BEIJING: An increasing taste for Western-style junk food and unhealthy lifestyles have caused the rate of breast cancer among urban Chinese women to jump sharply over the past decade, a state-run newspaper said Tuesday.
In China's commercial center of Shanghai, 55 out of every 100,000 women have breast cancer, a 31 percent increase since 1997, the China Daily reported.
About 45 out of every 100,000 women in Beijing have the disease, a 23 percent increase over 10 years.
"Unhealthy lifestyles are mostly to blame for the growing numbers," professor Qiao Youlin of the Cancer Institute and Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences told the newspaper. Poor diets, environmental pollution and increased stress are among the provoking factors, he said.
The report is the latest illustration of how Chinese are increasingly being diagnosed with diseases more common in the developed world, even while the national health care system remains fragile, expensive and out of reach to many Chinese.
Article sourced from International Herald Tribune, for further reading, kindly visit www.iht.com
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