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Gulf countries and the Arab world celebrated an outstanding week at the start of November, a week of awareness of cancers which started at the Gulf Cooperation Council level and expanded to become an Arab week for the promotion of awareness against cancer.
Gulf and Arab private societies succeeded in promoting awareness programs in Gulf and Arab societies, and the result is an increase in society's awareness towards three issues - the first is the reduction of fear from the word "cancer", the fear that kept patients, especially women, if they discovered a growth, from seeking medical advice, and which caused them to reach stages where recovery rates become very low. That was in the past, and today the opposite is correct, because most patients come for treatment in early stages and hope for them increases for the future.
Secondly, awareness contributed to spreading knowledge of the risk factors related to cancer, so people become aware of the dangers of obesity, smoking and viral conditions related to cancer. The truth is that awareness of risk factors needs support with laws, which are in the hands of legislators in our countries, and maybe this is the reason behind the limited effect in this field, as we are still in need of strict laws with regards to smoking of all types, specially e-cigarettes, which is the approaching danger.
Thirdly, spreading awareness means the importance of early treatment of cancer and early detection programs, be it by training or using modern technology such as breast x-rays, laparoscopes or tumor markers. This led to the increase in recovery from cancer, reaching in some cases to 95 percent and 85 percent due to people's awareness of the importance of early detection programs. This factor caused a rise in recovery level from cancers as a whole to nearly 70 percent. It is true that there are cancers that are difficult to treat, but most of these diseases have an effective treatment, especially in the early stages.
Awareness has taken excellent steps in fighting cancers, and we are witnessing these days in the Gulf and some Arab countries a cancer awareness week, which occurs on Feb 7 every year. The week is a successful partnership between the Gulf Health Council, which is under the GCC, represented by the Gulf Center for Cancer Control and Gulf NGOs, represented by the Gulf Union for Cancer Control.
This is a good partnership that has saved thousands of lives and made thousands of families happy, as when someone suffers from a chronic disease such as cancer, the entire family is affected. Numbers reveal an improvement in early detection by nearly 20 percent more than what it was in the past. Also, fear of cancer dropped from 85 percent by those who thought cancer has no treatment to 48 percent.
All these numbers reflect success of awareness and hope to one day reach a point when the number of late-stage cases are no more than 10 percent as the case is in some developed countries. This is a hope that will be achieved due to fruitful cooperation between the Gulf governments, the rest of our Arab countries and the private sector, a cooperation that leads to the interest of the Arab citizen to reflect the meaning of our nation's unity.
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