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31 July 2016

2016 World Cancer Congress - Big Debate

Cancer societies must invest more resources to reduce environmental and occupational cancer risk exposure.

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This particular debate will confront diverging thoughts on how to address the increasing risk of occupational exposure to carcinogens and the role of civil society.

We don’t hear much about occupational cancer. We hear about cancer as the tragedy for the individual, cancer as the challenge for the medical profession, cancer as the result of smoking and bad diet.

However, as an example, around 5% of total cancer deaths in Britain solely, and more than 13,000 cancer registrations were attributable to occupation in 2005 and 2004, respectively.

Given the scale of the risk exposure, it seems essential to adopt a global coordinated approach to implement cross-cutting policies and regulations. Interventions to reduce exposure to known environmental and occupational cancer risk factors are too often left out of National Cancer Plans.

This raises important questions to be debated, including - but not limited to:

  • the role of cancer societies?
  • the measures and competencies needed to create a comprehensive picture of occupational exposures in countries?
  • the scope for establishing basic principles of effective prevention and calls for systematic action from the various stakeholders?

Read more about the full arguments and start building your own opinion. As a Congress participant you will be able to rate the performance of debaters via the Congress App.

Which stand will you take?

Last update

Friday 07 June 2019

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