SOME FACTS ABOUT
THE #1 KILLER IN CANADA
Cancer is the leading cause of mortality in Canada and is responsible for 30% of all deaths. While it mostly affects Canadians aged 50 and older, cancer can occur at any age.
Directly or indirectly, cancer affects all of us.
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+220k
An estimated 220,400 new cases of cancer were diagnosed in Canada in 2019. It was expected that over 82,000 Canadians would die from cancer in 2019.
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50%
About 1 in 2 Canadians will develop cancer in their lifetime.
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+60%
63% of Canadians diagnosed with cancer will survive at least 5 years after their diagnosis.
Sadly, there is no magic cure :-(
Cancer is complex because it is not a single disease, but a group of diseases. In fact, there are more than 200 different types of cancer. This means that applying a single treatment approach is virtually impossible because each type of cancer requires a specific treatment. To outsmart the disease, we must act on many fronts to prevent, diagnose and treat cancer.
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Prevention
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Diagnosis
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Treatment
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RESEARCH IS KEY
Because of its complexity, one of the many challenges with cancer is to understand how it actually works. This understanding helps to figure out ways to outsmart the disease. Cancer research improves survival rates and quality of life because it spurs the development of new and better ways to prevent, detect and treat the disease.
RESEARCH WORKS
Thanks to research and our better understanding of cancer, there has been some amazing progress in recent years. Just 40 years ago (in the 1980s), if you had cancer, your chances of survival were of 25%. That means that 3 out of 4 people diagnosed with cancer died.
Today, survival rates exceed 60%. And for some types of cancer that historically had poor outcomes, we now see five-year survival rates surpassing 70, 80 and even 90 %.
More and more people are living with cancer, not dying from it. While the number of people expected to develop the disease is on the rise, death rates are thankfully declining. But we still have a long way to go as cancer remains the leading cause of death in the country.
THERE IS MORE HOPE
NOW THAN EVER BEFOREThanks to research, we are constantly gaining ground on cancer. And advancements keep coming. The knowledge we have acquired through research and the emergence of new technologies give us hope for accelerating the identification of treatments and for preventing its onset.
THE COMING YEARS WILL BRING MAJOR
BREAKTHROUGHS IN CANCER TREATMENT-
Better diagnosis
and early screening -
More effective
and targeted
treatments -
Improved
survival rates